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COMPLETE TREATISE 



ON 



ARTIFICIAL FISH-BREEDING: 



INCLUDING THE REPORTS ON THE SUBJECT MADE TO THE FRENCH ACADEMY 

AND THE TRENCH GOVERNMENT ; AND PARTICULARS OF THE 

DISCOVERY AS PURSUED IN ENGLAND. 



TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY 

W. H. FRY. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

346 & 348 BROADWAY. 
M.DCCC.LIV. 



SHi3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

in tho Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE. 

This work has been prepared at the suggestion of a num- 
ber of my scientific friends. Such a treatise is needed, 
as various agricultural societies"-*'-' of the Union, and 

* Artificial Fish. — It is not often that the proceedings of the Far- 
mers' Club, at the American Institute, supply a theme worthy of 
much consideration. A practical farmer occasionally gets among 
the judges, doctors, professors, <fec. , and relieves their forlorn inco- 
herences with a few sensible suggestions and useful information; 
otherwise the discussions of the fancy city-agriculturists who as- 
semble in the Institute rooms are very incongruous affairs — grate- 
ful, no doubt, to the obfuscated vanity of a few bewildered fogies, 
who can there make speeches on subjects of which they know noth- 
ing, or read dull translations from the French or Dutch, on other 
subjects, respecting which nobody cares anything. But some new 
blood has evidently been infused into the Club, and its proceedings 
are becoming worth the space allotted to them by the newspaper 
reporters. At a recent meeting, the subject of the artificial propa- 
gation of fish was introduced — and a more important one could 
scarcely engage their attention. 

The disciples of Isaak Walton have long deplored the gradual 
extinction of trout in almost every stream in which they formerly 
abounded, within a day or two's ride of the city. The rapacity 
with which they are pursued and caught, when too small for any 



IV PREFACE. 



likewise the Legislature of this State,"'*' have shown 
themselves alive to the importance of the new discove- 
ry, and hence indicated the necessity of a manual on it. 



purpose — too paltry even to "send to market" — argues a coarse 
spirit of dcstruotiveness that cannot exist in the true lover of ang- 
ling. We know parts of Connecticut famous for trout and game 
not many years ago, where neither a trout nor woodcock can now 
be found, and even the quail is a traditionary bird ; yet there are 
fine streams, and plenty of woodland. The unchecked lust for shil- 
lings has not left a fish or bird in whole counties. So, too, on 
the south side of Long Island, once esteemed among the best 
trouting localities in this State, where mischievous boys, and 
vulgar men, have been allowed to destroy them, until now a 
trout can scarcely be found. Nor are these worse than some 
of our city " sportsmen ! " whose highest idea of sport is wanton 
destruction. We heard one boast last summer of having killed 
twelve hundred trout in two da3's at Catskill! Of course they 
were nearly all young fish, the largest probably three inches long. 
A very few were brought home (putrid when they arrived), and the 
remainder were left to perish on the banks of the stream. We won- 
der the people of that region did not prevent such vulgar slaugh- 
ter. The man ought to be prohibited from all " sport " but catch- 
ing bull-frogs for ever after. 

Mr. Pell, the celebrated horticulturist of Ulster county, who 
has also turned his attention to pisciculture, predicts the speedy and 
total annihilation of shad in our rivers, unless something is done 
by the Legislature to preserve them. He avers that whereas it 
used to be a common thing to draw 1600 shad at a haul, the fish- 
erman now gets sometimes one or two fish in his net. These are 
facts coming directly home to our breakfast and dinner tables, and 
certainly are legitimate subjects for legislative interference. — From 
the Sunday Times, March 19, 1854. 

* Preservation of Fish. — A bill has been introduced into the New 
York Senate for the preservation of fish in the waters of this State. 
The first section provides that " all persons in the State of New 
York who obtain a livelihood by the capture of fish, shall, toward 



PREFACE. V 

All SO far known that is really important in regard 
to it, and has been brought to light by the commis- 
sioners appointed by the French Government to in- 
vestigate it, as well as by the experiments of private 
persons in France, is contained in this volume. To 
this is added a statement of English pisciculture. 
The entire history and practical details of artificial 
fish-breeding are, therefore, to be found in these 
pages. The value of the discovery, and the expe- 
diency of turning it to account, will speak for them- 
selves. According to the authorities I have cited, it 
is a subject equally interesting to the farmer, the 
economist, and the statesman, and will prove a source 
of immeasurably great wealth if properly pursued. 

It seems that a discovery of the highest impor- 
tance, of a mode of actually creating fish in illimita- 
ble numbers, was made in G ermany nearly a century 
ago ; but so much occupied were the people of Eu- 
rope in the art and science of cutting one another's 

the close of the fishing season, impregnate the spawn taken from 
at least two dozen female fish, ^yith the milt taken from the same 
number of male fish, and plant the same upon their fishing ground, 
in presence of the justice of the peace of the district, or some per- 
son appointed by him." A fine of $50 is provided for a violation 
of the act. Suits may be brought by the superintendents of the 
poor, and the penalty to go to the support of the poor. If brought 
by other persons, one half the sum to go to the support of the 
poor, the other to the person bringing the suit. — From the Sunday 
Atlas, March 26, 1854. 



VI PREFACE. 

throats, that it was lost sight of, and was recently 
re-discovered in a more valuable form, by two poor 
illiterate French fishermen, and practically demon- 
strated by them more than ten years since, in their 
quiet and secluded neighborhood. Discoveries, how- 
ever, to be known in France at all, must, owing to 
the system of centralization existing in that country, 
have Parisian and governmental sanctions. So it is 
not surprising that this one of artificial fish-culture, 
remained unnoticed and unknown till 1849, when, 
having chanced to come to the knowledge of Dr. Haxo, 
a scientific man residing in the same department as 
the two fishermen, it was by liim communicated to the 
Academy of Sciences at Paris, in a paper which 
caused a great sensation in that learned body. Im- 
mediately a commission, consisting of three of its 
distinguished members, Messrs. Milne-Edwards, Du- 
meril, and Valenciennes, was appointed to investigate 
the discovery, and make a report. Their investiga- 
tions, as well as those of the celebrated naturalist, 
Mons. Coste, brought out the fact that the discovery 
w^as only an improvement upon an old one which 
was made and forgotten nearly a century ago. The 
merit of the two fishermen, Gehin and Kemy of 
Yosges, was, however, undeniable, and admitted by 
the commission ; and there appears to be no doubt 



PREFACE. Vll 

that theirs was a veritable discovery, or re-discovery, 
and that but for them the method of artificial fish- 
culture would have remained to this day as unknown 
as it was twenty years ago. 

The proceedings of tliis learned body, the highest 
scientific authority of France, and perhaps of the 
world, brought the matter to the attention of the 
French government, and resulted in the appointment, 
by the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, of M. 
Milne-Edwards, a member of the Institute, to make 
an investigation, and report to the Government. 
This report is the subject of a volume of criticism 
by Dr. Haxo, who censures Milne-Edwards and the 
other academicians for their unfairness to the two 
fishermen. Be that as it may, the Government re- 
warded the fishermen with places and pensions : and 
upon the recommendation of the Keport that theirs 
was the best method, but from want of means they 
had not been able to carry it out on any large scale, 
the Government determined to take the matter in 
hand. With this view it made a first appropriation 
of 30,000 francs, and appointed Messrs. Berthot and 
Detzem, the engineers of the Khine and Khone canal, 
to erect at Huningen a government-establishment for 
artificial fish-culture, and to superintend its workings. 
This establishment went into operation in 1852, and 



Vm PREFACE. 

according to the report of M, Heurtrier, Director- 
General of Agriculture and Commerce, made to the 
Minister of the Interior, its superintendents, Messrs. 
Berthot and Detzem, had, in the first six months, 
artificially fecundated 3,302,000 eggs, and produced 
1,683,200 living fish. Of these, according to M. 
Coste, 600,000 were of the valuable species trout 
and salmon. 

These results achieved, under Government sanc- 
tion, brought public attention to the subject in 
France and in Great Britain. Seven works, by as 
many difierent authors, were published upon the 
subject : three in France by Coste, Godenier and 
Haxo ; and four in England by Shaw, Boccius, and 
two anonymous writers. Agriculturists and general 
readers on this side of the ocean began to wish for 
light, and among others the editor of this volume. 
But none was to be had, for strange as it may ap- 
pear, yet true, and proving how slowly the knowledge 
of great truths sometimes travels, not a copy of any 
one of these publications was to be found at any 
bookseller's in New York, even a year after their pub- 
lication in France and England. The editor conse- 
quently caused them to be imported ; and, translated 
by him, in this single volume will be found a selec- 
tion embracing all that is valuable in their contents. 



PREFACE. IX 

This book contains a translation entire of the 
work of M. Coste, the fullest which has appeared, 
giving a history of the discovery and of all that has 
been effected by it ; likewise a complete translation 
of the pamphlet of M. Godenier, describing particu- 
larly the practical methods of the two fishermen, 
Gehin and Kemy, for whom he claims the merit of 
the discovery ; a translation is also given from Dr. 
Haxo's work, of M. Milne-Edwards' Eeport to the 
French government upon the whole subject ; and to 
these is added a series of papers on artificial salmon 
breeding published in BelVs Life in London, during 
January and February of this year, and containing 
some valuable information on that particular branch 
of the subject. 

The discovery of artificial fish-culture, in a word, 
claims to show how, at little care and little cost, bar- 
ren or impoverished streams may be stocked to an 
unlimited extent with the rarest and most valuable 
breeds of fish, from eggs artificially procured, im- 
pregnated and hatched. 

W. H. F. 

New York, July, 1854. 



The following is a table of some French measures used in the 
course of this work : 

A Metre is equal to about 3;^ feet. 

A Kilometre " " 109 3|- yards. 

A Decimetre nearly 4 inches. 

A Centimetre about one-third of an inch. 

A Millimetre about one twenty- fifth of an inch. 

A Hectare about 2? acres. 
The metre is the base of all French measure, and is a fixed or 
scientific means of determining length adopted by the French Insti- 
tute and Government: it is the ten-millionth part of the arc of a 
meridian between the pole and the equator. 



Plate I. 




HATCHING-BOX OF GEHIN AND REMY. 
{See page 14.) 



Plate II. 



Fig. 1. 



Fig. 2a. 




7~7 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE IL 

Fig. 1. — Figure intended to give an idea of the manner ot ex- 
tracting the eggs from the living fish. 

Fig. 2. — Working-apparatus for hatching: a, parallel canals 
composing it ; b, stop-cock by means of which the stream of water 
can be regulated ; c, long earthen tubs adapted to this apparatus 
for receiving the fish just hatched. 

Fig. 2a. — Front view of hurdles upon which the eggs are 
placed in the hatching apparatus. 

Fig. 3. — Another kind of hatching apparatus, consisting of a 
canal (a) of wood or earthenware, of an ordinary fountain (6) and 
a tub to receive the running water, (c.) 



Plate 11.^ continued. 




Fig. 8. 



Fig. 9. 



Fig. 6. 



Fig. 11. 



Fig. 10. 



Fig. T. 





Fig. 12. 




EXPLANATION OF PLATE IL, Continued. 

Fig. 4. — Floating apj)aratus for hatching in running streams, 
consisting of a wicker-box or basket, in which are fitted hurdles, 
as in the other apparatus. 

Fig. 4a. — Hurdles for the floating apparatus. 

Fig. 5. — Box for transporting the eggs. 

Fig. 6. — Small perforated leaden shovel for lifting from the 
hurdles the fish just hatched, to transfer to the tubs or running 
streams. 

Fig. v. — Brush of badger-hair for the purpose of cleaning the 
eggs of the sediment which settles upon them. 

Fig. 8. — A salmon's egg developing. 

Fig. 9. — A salmon just hatched ; a, its umbilical bladder. 

Fig. 10. — A young salmon having been fed from its umbilical 
bladder. 

Fig. 11. — Young salmon, aged three months, reared at the 
College of France. 

Fig. 12. — A young salmon, aged six months, reared at the same 
place. 



TREATISE 

ON 

THE ARTIFICIAL FECUNDATION AND INCUBATION 

OF 

THE EGGS OF FISH, 

AND 

THE REARING OF THE YOUNG FISH, ACCORt)ING TO THE PROCESSES OF 

MESSRS. GEHIN AND REMY, FISHERMEN OF VOSGES, 

AND MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY OF 

SCIENCES OF PARIS. 

PREPARED FROM THE FACTS FURNISHED 

BY 

M. GEHIN 

TO 

The Editor, C. E. P. GODENIEE, Fisherman. 



M. GEHIN IN THE DEPAKTMENT OF ISERE. 

Mr. Gehin, one of the authors of the great dis- 
covery of the artificial production, fecundation, in- 
cubation and hatching of the eggs of fish, was com- 
missioned by the government, at the instance of Mr. 
Adolph Perier, to make a tour through the Depart- 
ment of Isere, in the month of November, 1851, for 
the purpose of instructing others in the processes by 



8 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

which he accomplished such extraordinary results. 
He travelled through many of the communes, stop- 
ping at Allevard, Pontcharra, Sassenage, Veurey, 
Vizille, D'Oisans, Kives, Pont-en-Royans, Paladra, 
Lemps, St. Geoire, Arandon, Buisse and Grenoble, 
and every where experimenting publicly. He enlist- 
ed the services in some places of Messrs. Janon and 
Rafin, fishermen of Veurey, who were engaged in 
collecting the spawn from which supplies could be 
furnished as required. 

He also made arrangements with Mr. Millon, 
fish dealer at Charavines, by which he would be able 
to furnish the eggs of Vomhrc clievalier ; a very 
rare species of trout, which, in France, is only 
found in Lake Paladru, and indeed only in a certain 
part of that lake. This is the most beautiful of 
French fishes, and by epicures is considered more 
delicate than any other taken in fresh water. It 
spawns in December. Mr. Perel, fisherman, No. 3, 
Neuve-des-Penitents street, Grenoble, can supply 
the spawn of this trout. 

In the course of his journey, Mr. Gehin prepared 
more than two hundred boxes of eggs and deposited 
them in well selected places to effect the artificial 
hatching. 

NATURAL PRODUCTION AND HATCHING. 

We have witnessed the operations of Mr. Gehin, 
at Sassenage. But before describing them, let us 
say a word on the causes which led Messrs. Gehin 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. y 

and Kemy to discover their metliod. Mr. Geliin has 
detailed them to us, as follows : — 

Messrs. Gehin and Rcmy^ of the commune of 
Bresse, in the department of Vosges, were fishermen, 
living by their calling. Every year at spawning 
time, they ffelt regret at the vast destruction of eggs 
contained in the female fish they took, and naturally 
their thoughts turned towards the discovery, if pos- 
sible, of some mode of preventing the evil. 

As long ago as 1841, they commenced to observe 
carefully the habits of the trout, and in the month 
of November of that year, during a full moon, they 
passed night and day on the bank of a river, never 
for an instant losing sight of these fish, and watch- 
ing most intently all their preparations for laying 
and preserving their eggs. 

The results of their observations were these : — 

The trout come together in a shoal, and choose 
a current with a gravelly bottom as the best place to 
lay their eggs. They dig in it a round hole, some- 
times of the depth of seven inches by three feet in 
diameter ; they place in the middle of this space, 
parallel with the current, a line of stones, the size 
of which varies with the size of the fish. 

The female then passes over this line of stones, 
gliding over, rubbing against or resting upon them. 
This she does again and again, some twenty or thirty 
times, till her eggs are all laid in the crevices of the 
gravel. 

When the female has done this, the male, in 
1* 



10 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

the same manner^ by passing over and pressing upon 
the gravel, emits the milt, or soft roe, which covers 
and fecundates the eggs ; then with tail, fins, head, 
and belly he works away till he manages to cover 
the eggs with gravel. 

Now a second female commences, and in the 
same manner lays her eggs in a parallel line with 
and against the first row. When the fecundation is 
complete, which generally happens in about fifteen 
days, according to the number of fish, all unite in 
heaping up stones and gravel in mounds upon the 
eggs, in a manner resembhng the great ant hills that 
may be found near by. 

Mr. Gehin believes that their mason-work is, in 
a manner, cemented by a slimy secretion, with which 
they cover the stones, while incessantly rubbing over 
and pressing against them in heaping them up ; for 
he found it difiicult to destroy the mounds so formed 
by scratching apart the material with his fingers. 

The eggs remain in this way for a month or two, 
while the process of incubation goes on ; at the end 
of a time which Mr. Gehin could not precisely de- 
termine, the little fish appear about the size of pins, 
come out of their cell between the interstices of the 
gravel, and seek in the tranquil waters, near the 
shores, a place of safety. 

Having thus discovered nature's secrets, it re- 
mained to discover a mode of rendering them practi- 
cally useful, and not until after many failures did 
Gehin and Remy hit upon a sure process, incontes- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 11 

tably superior even to that of nature herself. This 
may be deemed too bold an assertion, but a mo- 
ment's reflection will prove its truth. 

Does not man sow his entire field with the single 
sort of grain he wishes to cultivate ? Where in its 
natural state will we find a field producing one only 
kind of grain ? Do we ever find in a state of na- 
ture, and within equally circumscribed limits, the 
same number of any single species of animal, as in 
our stables, sheepfolds, or barnyards ? What, then, 
is there to hinder us from stocking bountifully our 
streams with fish, by aiding the process of hatching, 
and protecting the young from destruction by their 
innumerable enemies ? 

How these objects are attained by Mr. Gehin we 
shall now proceed to show, regretting to add that 
his partner, Mr. Remy, is no longer able to co-operate 
with him, owing to a disease — the result of exposure 
during the experiments — which bids defiance to doc- 
tors' skill and incapacitates him from labor. 



ARTIFICIAL FECUNDATION. 

We will now proceed to explain the processes of 
Mr. Gehin, as exhibited at Sassenage. His experi- 
ments there w^ere made with trout of the weight of 
250 to 300 grammes, preserved alive in a reservoir. 

Mr. Gehin takes a female trout when she is ready 
to spawn, holding her by the back with his left 



12 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

hand, he prevents her violent struggles by pressing 
her head and body against him, and with his other 
hand strokes her belly, till, in a few moments, she 
becomes quieted. All animals are sensible to these 
caresses, or similar ones made on their backs, and 
take them willingly ; witness the cat and dog, which 
by purring, whining, rubbing against us, or licking 
our hands seek to obtain them. 

When the trout is thus magnetized, or put to 
sleep, as Mr. Gehin calls it, he inclines it over a vase, 
which he has prepared to receive its eggs by putting 
in it about a quart of water ; in order to make sure 
of the fish remaining quiet, another person, if neces- 
sary, holds its tail, then Mr. Gehin with the thumb 
and forefinger of his right hand presses lightly the 
belly from top to bottom. This must be carefully 
and gently done, as one would press from root to 
extremity a finger cut at the end, to extract the 
blood and prevent its further flow ; or as one would 
milk a cow, but by no means with so much force as 
that operation requires, for if the proper time has 
been chosen the eggs will be pressed out by a very 
gentle effort, and if more is required, it will prove 
that the fish has not gone her full time for spawn- 
ing, and the eggs thus obtained cannot in that case 
be fecundated. 

Passing: the fino-er and thumb in this manner 
over the fish's belly, the eggs at each pass will spirt 
out, like a little liquid stream, falling into the vase. 

When by a number of these passes the eggs are 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 13 

all pressed out, a male fish is taken and operated 
upon in the same manner ; the milt thus expressed 
from the male falling into the vase and upon the 
eggs gives the water a white hue. The male fish, 
like the female, must be subjected to a number of 
gentle passes to obtain the result. When this is 
done, the contents of the vase must be stirred about 
with the hand, or what is still better, with the tail 
of the male fish still wet with the milt that has 
flowed over it, — an operation resembling that made 
by the fish in its natural state. 

After a very short period the water must be 
carefully poured off and a like quantity of fresh wa- 
ter poured on the eggs. 

Before the mixture of the milt and the water 
covering the trout's eggs, their color is a pale orange 
and transparent. After the mixture the eggs that 
have been fecundated assume a brownish hue, and a 
black speck, of the diameter of two millimetres, ap- 
pears in the centre of each. 

After this the water must be changed once or 
twice more. 

When the fecundation is complete some of the 
eggs will appear white. These are the unfecundated 
ones being sterile and dead, and if allowed to remain 
will, like all other lifeless things, become putrid and 
corrupt the rest ; they must therefore be carefully re- 
moved. 



14 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 



ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION. 

We have seen that in artificial fecundation na- 
ture has been imitated, where the fish voids its eggs 
by passing over and pressing its belly against smooth 
stones. This natural method being imitated by the 
hand of the operator all the eggs are evacuated with- 
out the loss of a single one. 

In artificial incubation Mr. Gehin has in like 
manner exactly imitated nature in the processes he 
employs. He takes a round box in the form of a 
warming-pan, except that the bottom rises a little in 
the inside in order to make it remain more firm in 
the position in which it may be placed. It is made 
of zinc to prevent rust ; its size — twenty centimetres 
in diameter and seven centimetres in depth ; the lid 
four centimetres in height, on hinges, with a catch. 
The box is pierced on every side, with two thousand 
holes, so that the water can freely flow through it 
over the gravel. These holes are a millimetre in di- 
ameter and should be very carefully and smoothly 
made, with a punch, in such a manner as not to wound 
the little fish attempting to escape through them. 

The bottom of the box is covered with a bed of 
fine gravel, and on this are placed the fecundated 
eggs. Each box should contain one brood of eggs. 
The box is then closed, a hole is dug for it in the 
gravelly bottom of a running stream of fresh water 
in which it is placed and gravel is strewed over it. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 15 

It is necessary to take all these precautions in or- 
der that the water flowing through the gravel may be 
purged of its impurities before it enters the box, and 
not deposit mud and slime upon the eggn and retard 
or prevent altogether the hatching ; as Gehin and 
Kemy observed was the case when such precautionary 
measures were omitted. 

The box so placed is left for a month or two. Mr. 
Gehen could not determine the exact time of the 
process of incubation, as it varied with the quality of 
the water. This question is now occupying the at- 
tention of scientific men, and from their researches 
we shall have the exact results. 

In place of using a box, a hole may be dug in the 
gravel, and the eggs may be deposited in it and cov- 
ered over with pebbles in the manner practised by the 
fish. But the progress of the incubation cannot 
then be as accurately watched as with a box, which 
can be opened and closed at pleasure. 

Mr. Gehin observed these phenomena of the 
hatching : the tail comes first from the egg, and the 
pieces of the fine skin or shell torn by it, form the two 
hinder fins. The head next appears at the other end, 
and the torn sheU there forms the forward fins. The 
lower part of the egg forms the belly, and the upper 
part next is broken, and the back appears. The 
shell or skin which enveloped the embryo is not de- 
tached from the newly-born fish, but becomes a part 
of and is absorbed by it. 



16 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 



PRESERVATION OF THE YOUNG FISH. 

As incubation goes on and hatching time ap- 
proaches, in order to determine when it will take 
place and not to their injury retain the little fish too 
long prisoners, the boxes should be frequently in- 
spected. When incubation is finished and the little 
fish begin to move, they must still be kept inclosed 
from eight to fifteen days, according as their numbers 
are small or great ; then they may be set at liberty 
in the quietest part of the stream, care being taken 
that the quality of the water is the same as that 
which has flowed through the boxes, for a change to 
water of more or less freshness or clearness will have 
a sensible influence on their frail existence. 

A wide field for experiment is here open to any 
who choose to enter upon it : for example, it would 
be very interesting to ascertain the results of different 
modes of treatment by placing similarly, either con- 
fined in large boxes or at liberty in running brooks, 
equal numbers of young fish, and supplying one set 
with thickened blood and other food, and leaving the 
other set to find such food as nature afibrds, to note 
the relative increase. Experiments, too, might be 
made with boxes having larger holes than those be- 
fore described — large enough for the escape of the 
young fish as soon after hatching as they might seek 
their liberty ; which mode might do away with the 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 17 

necessity of watching the process of hatching, with 
the view to opening the boxes soon after. 

ON THE PRESERVATION AND TRANSPORTATION OF 
THE EGGS. 

In some sections of country, when many crops 
have been gathered from the same plot of ground, it 
becomes in a degree exhausted, and, whether to im- 
prove it for the same or prepare it for another kind 
of crop, it is usual to overflow it, converting it into a 
fish pond and stocking it with carps and tench. 
After three or four years the water is drawn off, the 
fish taken and sold, and the land cultivated. A few 
years having elapsed it is again overflowed, but need 
not again be stocked with fish, as they now appear, 
as it were, spontaneously. We have the evidence of 
numerous observers as to this fact, and among others 
the inhabitants of a commune near Grrenoble. They 
state-that there is a little lake on the side of a hill in the 
commune of Jarrie, not far distant from their town, 
which is well stocked with carps and tench. Some- 
times the lake dries up and the ground is then cul- 
tivated with hemp and yields abundantly ; and again 
it is filled with water, and carps and tench appear in 
great quantities. 

The river Drac has a wide bed, and the current 
at times makes new channels or retakes old ones 
which have dried up ; in the pools of these old chan- 
nels soon appear quantities of trout whose size shows 



18 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

their age to date from the period of the water's re- 
turn. This fact is vouched for by the fishermen of 
that river. The inference is clear, that the fecunda- 
ted eggs have been left in the bed of the channel at 
the time it dried up, and so remained until the re- 
turning waters have united all the necessary elements 
of incubation, which has then taken place, and soon 
after the eggs have been hatched. 

Founded on these facts, Mr. Gehin adopts the 
following mode for preserving and transporting fe- 
cundated eggs. 

He takes one of the boxes we have already des- 
cribed, and covers the bottom with a bed of fine sand; 
he covers this with a layer of gravel or pebbles, vary- 
ing in size from a pea to a hazelnut, and upon the 
gravel he spreads a layer of fecundated eggs. These 
again are covered with sand, then another layer of 
gravel and then one of eggs, and so on till the box 
is filled. He takes great care beforehand to wash the 
sand and gravel so as to free it entirely from every 
particle of mud or sHme. 

When the box is full he dips it in water so that 
its contents shall be thereby more closely packed to- 
gether ; and being thereafter exposed to the air it 
can be sent anywhere without altering the condition 
of the eggs. 

On the receipt of the box its contents are taken 
out and placed in five or six other boxes — each con- 
taining the spawn of one female ■ — and these are 
placed in the gravelly bed of a stream according to 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 19 

the directions before given as to artificial incuba- 
tion. 

If any of the eggs have a different appearance 
from that before described as fitting them for incuba- 
tion they must be thrown away, and the cleaner the 
eggs are the better will be the success of the experi- 
ment. The sterile and spoiled eggs become white 
and opaque like the white of a hen's egg boiled, and 
if broken yield a milky fluid. 

Mr. Gehin tried the experiment of drying in the 
sun eggs spread on paper, and then placing them in 
a hatching box. With some he succeeded. Now 
that Gehin and Kemy have opened the way, we may 
look for the results of various experiments that will 
doubtless be made by others, in the modes of pre- 
serving, eggs, crossing the breeds of different species 
offish, and kindred matters. 

UTILIZATION OF FISHING AT TIMES PROHIBITED BY 
LAW. 

Trout-fishing is prohibited during spawning time, 
that is during November and December, because the 
fish coming then together in shoals can so easily be 
taken and the work of reproduction prevented. But 
fishermen, stimulated by large profits and lessened 
toil, brave the law and destroy in the germ millions 
on millions of fish. 

To these fishermen Mr. Gehin gives this advice : 
they should take with them a little pot made of zinc ; 



20 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

say five inches in diameter and six inches deep. It 
should be filled one third full of water, and a piece of 
wood the size of the pot may cover the water to pre- 
vent its splashing out as the pot is carried from one 
place to another by the fishermen while at their work. 
When they take a female fish they should put her 
eggs in the pot and in like manner put into it the 
milt from the male fish. Mr. Gehin thinks it unim- 
portant whether the eggs or the milt be first placed 
in the pot; that will depend on whether the female or 
male is first caught. When they have done fishing 
they should dig a hole in the bed of the current near 
where they have been fishing, and cover the bottom 
with fine gravel. Into it they should pour the eggs, 
which, when fecundated, will drop to the bottom 
among the gravel like little shot. The hole should 
then be filled up with little stones and covered with 
gravel, and incubation will go on and in due time the 
eggs will be hatched. 

By these means the fishermen, while reaping all 
the advantage of their illegal trade, will not be in 
fact doing any injury to the process of reproduction. 

GENERAL REMARKS. 

Mr. Gehin has observed that fish are with diffi- 
culty accHmated on being taken from one stream to 
another ; often they die ; almost always they become 
sterile. But eggs so transported are easily incubated 
and hatched, and produce fine fish. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 21 

He has also remarked tliat except in a running 
stream, other fish than carp and tench become bar- 
ren. 

When fish are caught for the purpose of taking 
from them the eggs and are found to be in an unfit 
state to be operated upon, from not having gone their 
full time, they should be kept in a reservoir till the 
proper time, and then relieved of their eggs and set 
at liberty again. Otherwise they will die in the res- 
ervoir ; as they will not while in that manner kept 
prisoners spawn naturally, but will retain their eggs 
and perish. 

When eggs are preserved in water, it must be 
frequently renewed or aquatic plants be placed in it. 
These plants preserve the eggs in unchanged condi- 
tion. 

We have weighed one hundred unfecundated eggs 
of small trout, after having preserved them in water 
for two days, and dried them on linen for five minutes, 
and found their weight to be four gram. Twenty- 
six eggs placed in a straight line made one hundred 
millimetres, which gives a diameter of a little less than 
four millimetres for each egg. 



RESULTS WHICH MAY BE HOPED FROM THE DISCOV- 
ERIES OF GEHIN AND REMY. 

Man reigns on the earth supreme : he bends the 
sun to his use for the plants he requires ; domestic 



22 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

animals submit to his will and produce at his plea- 
sure ; he commands the waters to transport him 
with fearful speed, and soon perhaps the air will be 
conquered. All nature seems to obey his laws. The 
fish alone have escaped his dominion, but not his 
nets. 

Now Mr. Gehin has discovered the secret of their 
reproduction, and placed in our grasp the means to 
enliven our rivers and watercourses, as we cover our 
fields with corn, hemp or flax, as we multiply our 
flocks, our domestic fowls, our silk worms. 

The discovery of Gehin and Remy is a great fact 
for humanity, parallel with the introduction into 
France of the potato. 

Like all other great discoveries, now that we have 
it, this seems the simplest in the world. How, we 
ask ourselves, was it possible for any one to eat 
fish-roe without thinking of the innumerable fish 
thus destroyed in the germ, and what would that 
thought lead to but the search for a mode of prevent- 
ing such wholesale slaughter and the easy discovery 
of such a mode .? Yet it took six thousand years to 
find the right means to solve readily and practically 
the difficulty ; and we now have the solution in so 
simple a form that even the children of fishermen 
practise it as easily as they would tend a flock of 
sheep. 

But the most elementary ideas, which ought to 
open at once the eyes of the world, are often those 
which are last taken hold of. They seem, indeed, like 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 23 

the mystical and undecipherable finger-post inscrip- 
tion ^' cesticilechemindesanes"''' to the bewildered 
gaze of the peasant. 

Thus, whenever and wherever on this earth three 
men have been brought together, in what is called 
the social state — that is, one to command, the second, 
the office-holder to oversee the execution of com- 
mands, and the third, the hewer of wood and drawer 
of water, to do and to suffer, — poor humanity has re- 
volted, and hence the ever-enduring, universal social 
war, for a just distribution of nature's gifts. Yet 
the solution of this problem, which has caused the 
flow of oceans of blood and tears, is perhaps as simple 
as that of artificial fecundation ; and possibly should 
society and government devote to it ever so small a 
part of its vast machinery of subjugation and repres- 
sion, the mighty social problem would soon be re- 
solved. 

For ever will the discovery of Gehin and Remy be 
a fruitful fact for humanity ; one of the grandest dis- 
coveries of ancient or modern times ; a discovery 
which we place even above that of Leverrier : for, to be 
like him, the philosopher, man must live, and they 
find new and abundant means for existence. And 
this we aver while signalling Leverrier's discovery as 
the most brilliant evidence of the grasp and power of 
the human mind. And even with this acknowledg- 
ment, we would still put above his marvellous work 

* "This is the road for Asses." — Tr. 



24 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

the discovery of a sure mode to prevent all diseases 
incident to the potato or the grape ; for potato-roots 
saved from destruction would assuage much human 
misery, while the knowledge of the existence of Le- 
verrier's planet lessens not a single pang of a single 
human creature. 

Leverrier has been loaded with honors and crosses, 
he and his, and he earned these rewards. But what 
has society done for Gehin and Kemy ? It has given 
them both together the one sixth part of the sum 
offered to Mr. Gehin by the Spanish ambassador if he 
would take his invention to Spain. To Mr. Gehin 
the government has given an appointment to travel, 
as it may direct him, and spread abroad through 
France a knowledge of his discovery, and this office 
has a salary about equal to that of a petty commer- 
cial traveller. But, modest as is the salary, it 
suffices Mr. Gehin, who is distinguished for modesty 
and sobriety — qualities which add tenfold to any in- 
come. All the gold in the world cannot bring to such 
a man the riches which he finds in the moderation 
of his desires. 

But when we see so many men filling honorable 
and well-paid functions, loaded with pensions and de- 
corations after a few years' service, as if it were diffi- 
cult to find men capable of doing such duties, we 
naturally inquire how it is that the great work of 
Gehin and Bemy has not obtained for them a cross 
of honor. What social fact of our time can be put 
in comparison with their discovery ? 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 25 

If the smallest pattern of an academician — one 
called to his chair for a successful piece of poetry — 
had made such a discovery, he would by this tinae 
have had crosses from every sovereign in Europe ; but 
these are only two fishermen ! 

The bestowal of the cross, when it is richly 
merited, honors the giver ; and, in any case, tends 
to elevate the receiver. Not only crosses, but statues 
are due to Gehin and Remy, and posterity, more just 
than their contemporaries, will do them right. 



INJUSTICE TOWARDS THE INVENTORS. 

On the announcement of Gehin and Remy's beau- 
tiful discovery, the scientific world was of course in 
commotion. Envoys from the academies of Paris, 
Holland and Strasburg, came to the inventors to be 
assured of the reality of their claims. Reports 
attesting the truth were made to the Academy of 
Sciences and the government. Mr. Gehin was called 
to Paris. There he met the most honorable and 
friendly attentions from his countryman Mr. Buffet, 
the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, from 
whom he received many dinner invitations. He had 
also the honor of being invited to dine with the Pre- 
sident of the Republic. Besides all this, the Academy 
of Sciences inscribed the names of Messrs. Gehin and 
Remy among its members. 

All these circumstances denoted very clearly that 

2 



26 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH 

the process discovered by them is an economical fact 
of the highest importance. Simple fishermen are 
not thus treated, who have nothing but their industry 
to depend on for their livehhood, and no circle of 
acquaintance beyond their humble position in the 
social scale. But in the breasts of these two men 
existed instinctively the love of humanity, that fruit- 
ful sentiment which gives birth to great ideas and 
facts, the product of the heart and not of education. 

In the presence of such results the envy of sa- 
vants soon developed itself, and ere long some were 
found contesting with the inventors the claim to 
their discovery. Five or six learned writers were 
cited, who, in as many memoirs in different lan- 
guages, produced in the course of a hundred years, 
had shown that there existed some vague notion as 
to the practicability of artificial fecundation. And 
on this basis our two fishermen were accused of pla- 
giarising the original idea — they who in their process 
had never studied any other than the book of nature. 

We are greatly astonished at the injustice of 
these learned men, whose position should have 
prevented them from such acts. It is well known 
that learning does not invent : that is the province 
of genius. The most beautiful ideas are not due to 
science ; they are hatched from privileged brains, 
where they spontaneously appear, without regard to 
the knowledge of their possessor. Study does not 
conduct to ideas, it only leads to consequences. 

In the present case it seems to us, that, so far 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 27 

from blazoning to the world what those meritorious 
writers may have said about artificial fecundation, 
our savants should rather have been careful to keep 
their facts out of view ; for if we admit them, they 
only go to prove that these authors having commu- 
nicated to the academies their knowledge of artificial 
fecundation, those learned bodies could not put to- 
gether three simple ideas : fecundation, artificial 
hatching, and propagation, and draw from them, for 
the interests of humanity, the natural results which 
must strike the sense of any intelligent person ; and 
that it needed two simple fishermen to vivify their 
ideas and spread them before the world. 

How, then, can this embryo thrown a hundred 
years ago into the domain of science, and which up 
to this day has never been able to pierce the dust 
that envelopes it, be compared with the living idea 
of Gehin and Kemy ? an idea which from the begin- 
ning Spain and Holland have sought to carry off 
from France ; an idea, the consequences of which 
will soon fill, according to their needs, all the streams 
of the world ? What, indeed, is this sterile, useless 
egg, in presence of the millions of fish we can already 
enumerate, after these few years of almost unaided 
experiment ! 

We bring this sketch to a close by a single re- 
flection, but one sad enough : If humanity were in 
the moon (if we may be pardoned the illustration), 
and it were possible to establish intercourse with 
that orb, all our intellectual and material treasures 



28 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

would be lavished upon it. But what should be 
done for that which surrounds us ? Nothing. Pride 
would not be satisfied, pride born of egotism, which 
never produced any thing good. But we may con- 
sole ourselves by the maxim of immortal wisdom : 
^^ Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." 



PRACTICAL INSTRUCTMS 

IN 

FISH-RAISING. 

BY 

M. COSTE, 

MISUBEK OF THK FEBNCH INSTITUTE AND PEOFESSOK OF THE COLLEGE OF FKANCB. 



INTEODUCTION. 



HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF ARTIFICIAL FECUN- 
DATION. 

When and hy whom luas artificial fecundation 
discovered ? 

When and by lohom was the discovery practically 
and usefully applied ? 

These are the questions which I here propose to 
examine. 

About the middle of the last century, in 1758, 
Count de Goldstein, Grand Chancellor of His Pala- 
tine Highness for the Duchies of Bergues and Ju- 
liers, sent to one of his ancestors of the celebrated 
Fourcroy, an essay on the artificial fecundation of 



30 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

fishes' eggs, and on the employment of the process 
for stocking rivers and ponds. This remarkable 
work, of which Jacobi was the author, being in the 
German language, M. de Fourcroy found difficulty 
in translating ; Count de Goldstein consequently fur- 
nished him with it in Latin. The French version 
from this was published entire in 1773, in the Trea- 
tise on Fish (Traite General des Peclies), by Duha- 
mel du Monceau, by order of the Academy of Sci- 
ences. * 

I call Jacobi the author, because, many years be- 
fore Duhamel's work appeared, or the French version 
of the memoir sent to M. de Fourcroy by Count de 
Goldstein was known, M. Gleditsch communicated to 
the Koyal Academy at Berlin, which inserted it in 
the collection of its transactions for 1764, a detailed 
analysis of the paper by Jacobi, for which it was in- 
debted to Baron Weltheim de Barbke, and which had 
for its title, "Abridged account of the mode of arti- 
ficially producing Trout and Salmon, founded upon 
the practical experience of a skilful naturalist." 
(" Exposition abregee dune fecondation artificielle des 
Truites et des Saumons, qui est assuree sur des expe- 
riences cey^taineSjfaites par un habile naturaliste." f 
But as the work in question is an abridgment of a 
memoir in German famished by Jacobi himself, and 
as this naturahst proposes in it, in the same teo^ms, 

* Duhamel du Monceau, Traite des Peches, p, 334. Paris, 1773. 
f Hist, del Acad. ray. des sc. et des belles-lettres, ann6e 1764. 
Berlin, 1776, vol. XX. p. 47. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 31 

the modes recommended in the copy of the Count 
de Goldstein, it is clear that to him belongs the honor 
of the discovery. The original paper in which, after 
thirty years of research, he developes all the conse- 
quences of the discovery, was published in 1763 in 
the Journal de Hanovre. The author arrived at 
these important results in the following manner : 

It was known in his time that at spawning season 
trout and salmon ascend brooks in which clear water 
runs over a gravelly bottom, choose a resting-place, 
then working with head and tail manage to move the 
gravel, and heap it up in a manner to form a sort of 
dike to break the force of the current, in the inter- 
stices of which their progeny may find shelter. In 
this dike or gravel-bed the female deposits her eggs, 
pressing her belly against it to facilitate spawning. 
As the eggs are pressed from her their weight carries 
them to the bottom, and, as the bottom is pebbly, 
they fall into the interstices till they fill the bed thus 
prepared for their reception. Thus placed they are 
protected from being washed away by the force of the 
cuiTcnt, and preserved in a state of cleanliness which 
is necessary to their ulterior development. 

It was known too, at the time the memoir was 
written, of which Count de Groldstein gave a copy to 
M. de Fourcroy, that the moment the female finishes 
spawning, the male in like manner pressing with liis 
belly the gravelly bed emits his milt, and that this 
milt mixing w^ith the current passes like a cloud over 
the eggs, impregnating them with lifegiving parti- 



32 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

cles, and disappears after having for a moment 
troubled the transparent water. 

Scientific observation had it seems then establish- 
ed, that the contact of the egg and the milt was an 
external phenomenon realized between two products of 
parental organism, expelled from that organism and 
combining exteriorly to it. 

From this observation of what happens nonnally 
in nature to the idea of its artificial imitation, was 
only a step, and this was plain to the admirable sa-- 
gacity of the author of the memoir published by the 
Count de Goldstein. He thus explains it : " If this 
description of natural propagation by trout and sal- 
mon be compared with the artificial processes we 
have deduced therefrom, we flatter ourselves that in 
our method will be recognized all the principles in- 
dicated as essential to nature." * 

According to his description, after having emp- 
tied into a vessel a pint of clear water, he seized a 
female whose eggs were at maturity, and by a slight 
pressure expressed them into the vessel. 

Then he took a male and in like manner expressed 
into the vessel enough of his milt to give a milky 
hue to the water in imitation of nature's process, and 
thus he practised artificial fecundation. 

" A pint of very clear water,'' he says, " is poured 
into a nice clean vessel, such as a wooden bucket or 
shallow tub ; a female salmon is then taken by the 



Duhamel, op. city 2d part, p. 342. 



THE NEW ART OF Bl'vEEDING FISH. 33 

head and held over it, if the eggs have come to ma- 
turity they will fall into it ; if not, by pressing the 
belly lightly with the palm of the hand they can be 
made to do so. The male fish is then treated in the 
same manner. When from the male enough milt has 
been pressed out to whiten the surface of the water, 
the operation of fecundating the eggs is complete.'' "'*' 

But in order to complete his experiments and turn 
them to account in industrial application, he had 
prepared beforehand, to receive the fecundated eggs, 
long hatching-boxes, in the arrangements of which 
were combined all the conditions with which he had 
observed the females surrounded their spawn when 
deposited at the bottom of streams. He thus de- 
scribes this hatching apparatus : 

" The box may be constructed of any suitable 
size : for example, eleven feet long, a foot and a half 
wide, and six inches high. 

" At one extremity should be left an opening six 
inches square, covered by a grating of iron or brass 
wire, the wires not being more than four lines apart. 
At the other extremity on the side of the box should 
be made a similar opening, six inches wide by four 
inches high, similarly grated ; this one will serve for 
the escape of the water, the other for its entrance, 
and the grating will prevent water-rats or any de- 
structive insects from reaching the eggs. The top of 
the box should be closely shut for the same reason, 



* Duhamel, op. cit., 2d part, p. 334 
2* 



34 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

but a grated opening, similar to the rest, six inches 
square, may be left to give light to the young fish ; 
this however is not absolutely necessary. 

" A suitable place should then be chosen for the 
box, near a rivulet, or, what is still better, near a pond 
supplied with running water, from which may be 
drawn by a little canal a stream, say an inch thick, 
which should be made to pass continually through the 
gratings and through the box. 

" Lastly, the bottom of the box to the thickness 
of an inch should be covered with sand or gravel, and 
over this should be spread a bed of stones of the size 
of nuts or acorns. 

^' Thus will be made a little artificial brook run- 
ning over a gravelly bottom." * 

It is then in this artificial brook, where, I repeat, 
are found so cleverly united all the conditions sought 
by the female in a state of nature, that the author 
of the memoir published by the Count de Goldstein, 
deposits the eggs fecundated by the artificial process, 
the discovery of which belongs to him. 

" The eggs thus fecundated are spread," he says, 
" in one of the boxes so placed, and the water of 
the little rivulet passes over them, care being taken 
that it does not run with such rapidity as to displace 
and carry away with it the eggs, for it is necessaiy they 
should remain undisturbed between the pebbles.^f 

When he had thus scattered the fecundated eggs 

* Duhamel, op. cit, 2d part, p. 384. 
f Duhariiel, op. cit., 2d part, p. 335. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 35 

on the gravelly bottom of this artificial rivulet, he 
watched with care during the six or seven weeks of 
incubation, all the varied phases of their develop- 
ment, with a view of discovering any hidden obstacle 
to the success of the experiment. He found that 
the time necessary for incubation varied with the 
temperature : that it took a much longer time when 
the water was cold than when it was moderate. He 
found, too, that a sediment is deposited on the eggs, 
which is hurtful or destructive if allowed to remain, 
and to remedy this difficulty he cleaned them with 
the feather of a quill. 

" Care must be taken to remove from time to 
time the dirt which is carried by the water and de- 
posited on these eggs ; this can be done by stirring 
about the water with a quill feather." * 

Placed in these favorable conditions, and sub- 
ject to his assiduous care, the eggs passed safely 
through every stage of their development. The 
young fish, thus hatched, seemed quite equal to those 
hatched in the natural way. After their birth he 
still preserved them for five weeks, and did not turn 
them into his brooks till the umbihcal bladder ap- 
peared absorbed, that is to say, until they commenced 
to feel hunger. 

After an experiment so successfully made, and 
often repeated, the ingenious author of this discovery 
had the right to say as he did, that his method ap- 

* Duhamel, op. cit, 2d part, p. 336. 



36 THE NEW AKT OF BREEDING FISH. . 

plied to all species of fish might hecome a source of 
great profit. This claim to his discovery, his loorlc 
so well establishes, that it seems singular that any- 
one should attempt to deprive him of it. He places 
it beyond doubt, by the care he takes to show all the 
cases where his invention will give results theretofore 
impossible. Thus he demonstrates the possibility of 
creating at will, mixed breeds, by mixing the spawn 
and milt of two different species, which could not be 
done before his discovery ; he shows, too, the pos- 
sibility of hatching artificially alongside of ponds 
containing unproductive species, the eggs of these 
very species, and of stocking these ponds with young 
fish from these eggs. 

Every part of his research is characterized by 
such exactitude and practical good sense, that all 
fundamental questions are resolved ; and this new 
discovery had hardly appeared in the domain of 
science when it was transferred to that of industry. 

It was in the kingdom of Hanover, near to Nor- 
telem, that the first trials were made. They gave 
such important results that the fish so obtained be- 
came an object of considerable commerce, and Eng- 
land wishing to reward such service, granted a pen- 
sion to the party who successfully commenced it * 

Thus then, not only does the discovery of artifi- 
cial fecundation belong to the author of the memoir 
published by the Count de Goldstein, but to him too 

* Soirees helvetiennes, etc. Amsterdam, 1771, p. 169. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 37 

belongs the honor of its apphcation ; for the co?)!- 
mercial success, if I maybe allowed the phrase, of the 
Nortelem enterprise, was obtained under his influence 
and by putting in practice his ingenious method. 

In giving to industry this new method, science 
too was put in possession from that time of a means 
of production which she described in all treaties on 
the history of fishes, and which may be found even 
in the Fishing 31amcals. Science has unceasingly 
reproduced this discovery in her annals, and prac- 
tised it in her laboratories, in order that, wherever 
the depopulating of streams was producing want, 
people might know of a remedy for the growing evil. 
Science, in now bringing forward the fruits of her 
past experiences, and regulating their present appli- 
cation to the necessities of the times, only continues 
to fulfil her mission. 

We need not then be astonished, after having 
read what had previously been done, to find, when 
in 1837 and 1841, the number of salmon in the 
waters of Great Britain commenced diminishing, 
that Mr. Shaw first, and afterwards Mr. Boccius, pro- 
fiting by the knowledge of the process, formerly so 
successful in Hanover that their government had 
rewarded its author, had recourse to the same pro- 
cess for the multiplication of this valuable species. 
The memoir published by Count de Groldstein, 
that of Jacobi, and the industrial enterprise at Nor- 
telem, were the antecedents that guaranteed their 
success. 



38 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

Consequently, in 1837, Mr. John Shaw '•' took 
in the river Nith, in Scotland, a male and female 
salmon, at the moment the two fish were preparing 
the bed of stones in which to deposit their spawn, 
and dug along the shore a ditch into which he turned 
a current from the stream, and put in it an earthen 
pot ; then having expressed from the female the 
eggs into this pot, he expressed from the male the 
milt into the current flowing over the pot, into 
which the fecundating particles were carried, and 
the eggs impregnated. 

The eggs thus fecundated were carried to one of 
the basins he had had prepared for hatching them 
and preserving the young. There they were depo- 
sited on a bed of stones, under a fall of water from 
a little canal ; and after an incubation, which, owing 
to the low temperature of the water, lasted a hun- 
dred and ten days, the young salmon broke their 
shells. They were still preserved where they were 
born, and thrived so well that eighteen months af- 
terwards the males of this brood were capable of 
reproduction, as was proved by a number of expe- 
riments, fecundating with their milt the spawn of 
full-grown female fish taken from the river. 

In 1841, Mr. Boccius, a civil engineer of Ham- 
mersmith, carried to still greater lengths practical 
results of such experiments. He, like those who 
preceded him, made use of artificial fecundation for 

* Exp. Oh. on the develop, and growth of Salmon fry. Edin- 
burgh, 1840. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 39 

stocking the streams of Mr. Druramond, in the vicinity 
of Uxbridge, and he estimated the number of trout 
he produced and brought up there at 120,000. In 
succeeding years he practised the same process on 
the estate of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, 
of Mr. Gurnie at Carsalton, and of Mr. Hibberts at 
Chatfort."-'^ 

Just about this time, Mr. Remy, a fisherman of 
Bresse, an ilKterate man, and consequently ignorant 
that science was already possessed of the discovery 
of artificial fecundation, the application of which had 
already produced considerable results ; this fisher- 
man, I repeat, seeking a remedy for the decay of his 
branch of industry, passed many years of his life in 
one of the most secluded valleys of the mountains of 
Vosges, in reproducing the experiments already made 
by so many celebrated physiologists that the long list 
of their names need not here be recapitulated, and 
discovering what naturalists had already known for 
more than a century. Endowed by nature with a re- 
markable faculty of observation, and with that per- 
severance that no obstacle discourages, he succeeded 
in his enterprise. His process of artificial fecunda- 
tion does not differ from the one described in the 
memoir published by the Count de Goldstein, dis- 
covered by Jacobi, employed by all physiologists, by 
Boccius — for there could not be two modes of operat- 
ing, though his hatching boxes are not so rationally 

* Boccius, Fish i?i Rivers and Streams, London, 1848. 



40 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. ' 

combined as the artificial rivulets of the Count de 
Goldstein ; rivulets which, notwithstanding their 
superiority to the boxes of Messrs. Gehin and Remy, 
have still inconveniences which I have overcome by 
substituting wicker hurdles or baskets. 

But, as Mr. Milne Edwards has already stated in 
his remarkable re^^ort, if scientific men have preceded 
Mr. Remy in his researches, and if he has not enriched 
natural history with new facts, he is not the less 
worthy of our interest, and we owe to him our thanks, 
for he was the first in our country to couple the 
process of artificial fecundation with the preservation 
of the brood ; a combination which, considering the 
isolated scene of his labors, had, for him, all the 
merit of a real invention. His first essays, Mr. Gehin 
having subsequently been associated with him, were 
made in 1842."''"" 

Notwithstanding the invention having been laid 

*The government wishing to make to these two fishei-mea 
a proper acknowledgment, granted to Mr. Remy a tobacco factory, 
and at the instance of the commission (of which I was a member 
with Messrs. de Suzanne, de Bon, de Franqueville, Mauny, de 
Mornaj', Doy^re, and my two brother academicians, Milne 
Edwards and Valenciennes) an annual pension of 1,500 francs from 
the budget of the Minister of the Interior : and to Mr. Gehin a 
tobacco foctory at Strasburg, an annual pension of 500 francs, 
a gift of 1,200 francs, 10 francs a day for travelling expenses 
while in his department, and 2^ francs per myriameter out of his 
department. M. Huertier, Councillor of State, Director General 
of Agriculture and Commerce, who gives his powerful and intelli- 
gent co-operation to the organization of fish culture in France, has 
graciously and warmly responded to these views of the commis- 
Bion. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 41 

before the Society of Emulation of Vosges, and the 
granting by that society of a medal to these two 
fishermen, it remained buried in their archives ; for it 
was only in 1848 that the Academy of Sciences was 
apprised of the claim of the fisherman of Bresse. 
This claim appeared in consequence of a lecture in 
which Mr. de Quatrefages, without knowing of the 
researches of Mr. Remy, called the attention of agri- 
culturists to the fact, that science furnished them 
a means, discovered a century since, of re-populating 
their streams, as an organized trade in Germany and 
experiments in England had proved. 

At this period, I had already instituted experi- 
ments on the domestication of fish, of which my works 
on raising eels, and on the nest-building of the Epi- 
noche, are fragments — experiments which I have con- 
tinued at the College of France, where, as professor 
of comparative Embryogeny for ten years past, I have 
been obliged, in elucidating to my class the pheno- 
mena of conception, to make them observe the ac- 
tual processes of nature by the aid of the microscope, 
and to exhibit to them the experiment of artificial 
fecundation. The question of the application of this 
process entered naturally into the habitual course of 
my studies, and it seemed to me I was giving effec- 
tual aid to the organization of a new branch of 
industry by devoting my laboratory to it. I had 
in this no idea of setting up a discoverer's claim, 
or doing aught else than extending to the discovery 
a benevolent patronage. My life belongs to the new 



42 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

science, the teaching of which has been confided to 
me, and with which are connected the highest and 
grandest questions of natural philosophy ; a science 
of which, thanks to the friendship of M. Guizot, I 
have had the rare honor of being called to fill the first 
established professorship. 

It is not to be doubted, that in this discovery 
Germany and England have preceded France, but it 
is also true, that to our country belongs the honor of 
establishing its wide-spread popularity and European 
credit. 

Since the day when the results of Mr. Kemy's ex- 
periments were vouched for by the official report of 
Mr. Milne Edwards, and that, upon mj proposition, 
it was decided that a model establishment should be 
founded near Huningen, under the auspices of the 
government and the direction of Messrs. Berthot and 
Detzem, Engineers of the Rhone and Rhine Canal ; 
since, too, people have seen in course of construction 
in my laboratory, the hatching apparatus which I 
designed for it ; the public mind has been justly 
alive to a project touching in so high a degree the 
interests of society, and constant appeals have been 
made to the teachers of science to agree upon and 
make known the best and surest modes of success 
in this new industrial pursuit. 

It is in answer to these calls that I have insti- 
tuted at the College of France a series of experi- 
ments, in which I study, with the greatest care, all 
the conditions which favor or hinder their success. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 43 

Every one will admit, that if the process of arti- 
ficial fecundation is in the main the same for all the 
world, its practical details as to bringing up the 
young fish, their proper food, the mode of transport- 
ing them, etc., miist, in view of the present diversity 
of opinions, be established by decisive experiments, 
which will settle these questions and guarantee suc- 
cess. 

To make known this valuable discovery ; perfect 
its processes ; extend the application of them ; to 
reduce to certain rules different and uncertain prac- 
tices ; to introduce all the results which experience 
constantly gives ; to distribute to all countries, which 
shall need them for experiments, the fecundated eggs 
of the establishment at Huningen, in order to excite 
emulation ; this is the part which, in conjunction 
with Messrs. Berthot and Detzem, I have taken 
upon myself in organizing fish-culture. 

If I may judge from the evidences of good will 
which I am receiving from every part of France, and 
from foreign countries, by the measures taken by the 
government on the publication of my reports, I may 
believe that my intervention has not been useless. 
But artificial fecundation constitutes only one branch 
of the subject ; with regard to rearing aquatic ani- 
mals there are others no less important, which I 
hope soon to succeed in making equally celebrated. 

This publication, then, is but the first chapter 
of the labors I am engaged in, but a response to 
many demands for information which my occupa- 



44 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

tions have not permitted me to satisfy. I beg of all 
those who have done me the honor to address me, 
not to consider my silence as a want of courtesy, but 
as a necessity of which I now wish to relieve myself 
on presenting them this work. 



PMCTICAL mSTRUCTIONS 

IN 

F I S H-R A I S I N G 



CHAPTER FIRST 

PROCESSES OF ARTIFICIAL FECUNDATION. 

If artificial fecundation with the eggs of any species 
of fish whatever is tried, care must be taken, 
at spawning time, to bring together in a pond 
all the fish of that kind intended to be operated 
upon. Then, having a proper receptacle for the 
eggs, whether of glass, earthenware, wood, or even 
of iron tinned, it matters not, — ^provided it has a flat 
bottom, as wide at least as its mouth, so that the 
eggs may spread over it and not lie heaped up, — 
and having carefully cleaned the vessel, one or two 
pints of clear water should be emptied into it. 

When these preparations are made, a female fish 
should be taken, and held by the head and thorax 
with the left hand, while the right hand, its thumb 



46 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

upon the belly, and its fingers on the back and sides, 
is passed like a ring, lightly, backwards and forwards, 
and brings the eggs near the opening through which 
they are passed. {PL ^^fig. 1.) 

If the eggs are hard, and already free from the 
membrane of the ovaries, the slightest pressure suffi- 
ces to expel them, and under this pressure the abdo- 
men is emptied without injury to the female opera- 
ted upon ; for the following year she will become as 
fruitful as if she had spawned naturally, as we have 
often had occasion to observe at the establishment 
at Huningen. 

If, on the contrary, it appears that a greater de- 
gree of pressure is necessary to bring out the eggs, 
we may be sure they are still inclosed in the tissue 
of the organ which produces them, and that the ope- 
ration is premature. In this case it should not be 
persisted in, but the female should be put back into 
the pond, and allowed to remain there till her full 
time is accomplished, care being taken that this will 
soon occur ; for if a female fish in this condition is 
kept captive for any length of time in a circumscri- 
bed place, her eggs will spoil. 

If the females are too large to be held and emp- 
tied of their eggs by a single operator, another can 
aid him in holding them over the receptacle, either 
by passing his fiogers in their gills, or by securing 
them with a cord, and if the convulsive struggles are 
very violent, it may be necessary for a third person 
to hold the tail. The operator, then, with his 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 47 

thumbs upon the thorax and his fingers upon the 
animaFs sides, presses from top to bottom the enor- 
mous mass of eggs which distend the coats of the 
belly. The vertical position in which the fish is 
held usually suffices to press out the eggs nearest the 
opening, and the pressure of the hands, repeated 
several times, will successively bring all the rest. 

The easy expulsion of the eggs proves their ma- 
turity, for it shows they are detached from the ova- 
ries ; but it does not prove absolutely their capabi- 
lity of being fecundated. For there are some cases, 
the causes of which we have not ascertained, where 
the female being in a stream and at liberty, and 
having gone her full time, and her eggs being ready 
for delivery, yet she does not or cannot free herself 
from them, and being thus retained past their time 
they lose their reproductive faculty. 

Experienced persons easily recognize eggs of this 
sort by two evident characteristics : one is the flow- 
ing out with them of a foreign matter, of which there 
is no trace in their normal state, which gives a mud- 
dy hue to the water when the eggs begin to fall into 
it ; another is, the white color of these eggs when 
they come in contact with the water. When neither 
of these appearances is observed, we may be almost 
sure the operation will be successful ; for the eggs will 
then be in good condition. But in all cases we must 
guard against allowing too great a quantity of eggs 
to fall into one vessel, for if those on the bottom are 
covered over by too many others, they will not per- 



48 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

haps come in contact with the milt, which should 
reach every part of them. It will be well, if the fe- 
males are found to be very productive, to empty the 
spawn into a number of vessels. The results will 
then be more satisfactory. 

As soon as the process of delivering the female 
of the spawn is complete, if it appears that the ope- 
ration of expressing it has brought along with it any 
part of the mucus which is secreted by her intestines, 
the water should be immediately changed, so as to 
free it from every impurity, care being always taken 
that the eggs are not allowed to become dry. This 
done, a male fish should be taken, and his milt ex- 
pressed in the same manner as the female's eggs. 
If the milt has arrived at a state of maturity it will 
flow abundantly, white and thick like cream, and as 
soon as enough has been taken from him to give to 
the water in the vessel the appearance of whey, it is 
saturated sufficiently. But in order that the fecun- 
dating particles may be spread every where and uni- 
formly, the precaution should be taken of agitating 
the mixture, and of softly turning over the eggs 
with the hand, or what is better, with the fine long 
hairs of a brush, so that no part of their surface 
shall escape contact with the fecundating element. 

After two or three minutes' rest the fecundation 
is accomplished, and then the eggs, with the water 
surrounding them, should be emptied into the hatch- 
ing basins ; or if these basins are some distance 
removed from where the operation has been per- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 49 

formed, the water must be renewed before they ar- 
rive at their destination, provided the distance be 
not too great, for then other means must be taken, 
which I will explain when I come to describe m^ans 
of transport. • 

While the mixture is agitated to help the absorp- 
tion of the semen, if the eggs are of that species 
which are found to be naturally cemented together 
by a gelatinous matter, as, for example, are those of 
the perch, great care must be taken not to pull them 
apart. This agglutination is a natural condition of 
their development, of which it would be injurious to 
deprive them. 

There is still another mode of treating the mix- 
ture of fecundating particles with the water, which 
serves as a vehicle, and of aiding their absorption by 
the eggs to be fecundated : it is to place in the vessel 
a cullender well riddled, or better still, a fine basket. 
Into this, while in the water, the eggs are expressed, 
and then the milt. The cullender should then be 
moved about, up and down, and from side to side, 
care being taken to keep it always in the water. 
This movement has a double result : it thoroughly 
mixes the fecundating liquor and brings it in contact 
with every part of the eggs, and the experiment will 
be successful if, after the agitation of the cullender, 
it is allowed to remain at the bottom of the vessel 
quietly for two or three minutes. 

A third process is to express into the vessel the 
milt, and not cause the eggs to fall i^to the water 

8 



50 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH.' 

till it has been thus first charged with fecundating 
particles. The medium being thus j^repared before- 
hand, the eggs reach it in a condition of peculiar apti- 
tude for absorption, which they possess in the highest 
degree the first moment of their immersion. This 
mode then seems to offer the greater chance of suc- 
cess. I do not mean to assert that eggs laid in the 
water some time before the milt is brought in con- 
tact with them, lose the power of receiving its influ- 
ence. For, many times, on the Khine, I have had 
occasion to observe that those of the salmon and 
trout that had been expressed into the water nearly 
two hours before a male could be caught, still pre- 
served their aptitude for fecundation. But still it is 
an unfavorable condition, in which, if possible, they 
should not be placed ; above all, when the eggs of 
other species are treated, which have not, like the 
salmon and trout, a protecting and resisting envel- 
ope, but which are more sensitive to the influence of 
the exterior world. 

Another mode of treating artificial fecundation, 
and one more nearly resembling nature's processes, is 
to spread the eggs on a sieve fitted in a channel or 
trough of wood or stone, through which runs a cur- 
rent from a water pipe, under the spout of which the 
end of the trough is placed, and then to pour at 
this point the spermatized water, and leave to the 
running current the care of carrying the vivifying 
particles to the eggs ; but to operate in this way re- 
quires an apparatus not always at hand, and perhaps 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 51 

only to be found in an establishment designed for the 
business. For general use and ready application I 
recommend therefore, the process described at the 
commencement of this chapter. 

The milt of a single male will suffice to fecun- 
date the eggs of a large number of females, provided 
he is fed while in the pond or tank, and that care is 
taken not to take him from the brook and shut him 
up there until his milt is fully matured. Of this 
fact the author of the memoir published by the 
Count de Goldstein was aware, and I have often had 
occasion to verify it while on board the boat of the 
fisherman Glasser, at Bale, where the male salmon 
and trout emptied one day to fecundate the eggs 
destined for the government establishment at Hun- 
ingen, are found gorged the next, and so on every 
day, for the five or six during which their organs 
secrete semen. It is not necessary, therefore, in 
experimenting on a large scale, to have numerous 
males, but only that they should be in the condition 
I have indicated. 

CROSSING BREEDS. 

Artificial fecundation gives the means of obtain- 
ing, by crossing breeds, mongrels having the quali- 
ties of the parents of the two kinds crossed. It 
will be curious to note all the results from experi- 
ments of this nature. At present we know that 
trout and salmon can be crossed. Trout's eggs 



52 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH.* 

fecundated with Salmon's milt, by the operations of 
Messrs. Berthot and Detzem, on the Rhine, have 
been sent to me, and have been hatched in my la- 
boratory in Paris. Salmon's eggs fecundated by 
trout's milt, have been hatched in like manner. 
It now remains to be determined if the experiment 
of crossing these two kinds will, in like manner, suc- 
ceed with all others of the same family ; and, 
also, whether other kinds belonging to a different 
family, the pike, for example, mixed with the first, 
can procreate together. 

The difficulty which the author of the memoir 
published by the Count de Groldstein encountered 
was, that the pike spawns in April, while the sal- 
mon and trout spawn in November and December ; 
but now, as we can procure the eggs or the milt of 
the salmon of the Danube towards the end of April, 
that obstacle to experiment is removed. We can 
try the fecundation of eggs of this salmon with the 
milt of the common ombre, and of eggs of the om- 
bre with milt of salmon, and of eggs of both with 
milt of the pike, etc. 

The Chinese produce these results with golden 
carp, of which they procure infinite varieties ; but 
their trade consists in confining together the varieties 
of the same species, and allowing them to produce 
cross breeds by natural propagation. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 53 



CHAPTER SECOND. 

HATCHING APPARATUS. 

A CENTURY ago Jacobi, author of the memoir pub- 
lished by Count de Goldstein, recommended the 
spreading of the fecundated eggs among the pebbles 
of the gravelly bed of long wooden hatching boxes, 
grated at the ends, in imitation of the natural me- 
thod of spawning practised by the female fish. With 
this method he had complete success, and its applica- 
tion is still continued in Hanover, where it has so 
lowered the price of trout as to make that fish a very 
common article of food. This method is the one 
which has now been put in practice in France by the 
two fishermen of Bresse, who, instead of long boxes 
grated at the ends, have used circular ones riddled 
with small holes. But modes which seem suitable 
for experiments on a small scale, or in the beginning, 
are found inapplicable or inconvenient for a large and 
well organized trade. Some of these inconveniences 
are so striking, that I need only name them to show 
the necessity of recourse to other modes. 

In the first place, the dispersion of the eggs 
among the gravel and shutting them up tightly in 
boxes, prevents that care which could be given to 
them if they were always accessible. 

Next, the sediment deposited by the water, 



54 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

whether around or upon the box, or within it upon 
the eggs, forms soon a thick bed, which oftentimes 
destroys the eggs. I have seen boxes deposited in 
the streams at Versailles, of which all the holes were 
so stopped up with a calcareous deposit, that the 
water could not penetrate them, and when opened, 
the contents were found to be decomposed. 

Lastly, the difficulty experienced after the young 
fish are hatched to extricate them from their inac- 
cessible bed without wounding them, is an obstacle 
to their transport to the ponds where they need to 
be placed to mature. 

These inconveniencies have led us to seek modes 
the employment of which would enable us, when 
needful, to handle these products with as much facil- 
ity as we would inert matter. They are so simple, 
and of such evident utility, that they must be adopted 
when explained and understood. They can as well 
be applied to a regular trade as to the experiment 
of a laboratory, — to an enterprise on the largest scale 
as well as to the stocking of a pond or rivulet. 

On willow hurdles {plate 2, fig. 2 a) or flat baskets, 
incur hatching streams, we place the fecundated eggs. 
Their fine meshes form a sieve through which passes 
the sediment of the running water underneath, but 
near the surface of Avhich they are placed. In this 
superficial position, they can be so easily observed 
that nothing will escape a careful guardian. If he 
finds the current so strong as to displace and heap 
them up, he will moderate it. If any hurtful sedi- 



1 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 55 

ment begins to accumulate on them, he removes it 
with a fine brush. If after being left some time, a 
sort of coating of vegetable matter should be formed 
about them, upon the hurdle or basket, he empties 
them from this dirty one into a clean one, and by- 
means of this easy transfer, which he effects without 
injury even to the eggs just hatching or the fish just 
hatched, he maintains the cleanliness necessary to 
their development. 

But these are not the only reasons for preferring 
the hurdles just described to the pebbly bottoms re- 
commended by Jacobi and by the two fishermen of 
Bresse. There is another no less worthy of considera- 
tion : it is that after the birth of the salmon or trout, 
and we speak from having already made the experi- 
ment, the hurdles will serve as light rafts on which 
to float, through a channel of communication, the 
young fry to the pond in which they are to be kept. 
To do this, it is only necessary to inclose them in a 
floating frame which the current will carry to their 
destination. The crowds of people attracted by cu- 
riosity to the College of France have had the oppor- 
tunity to see more than 10,000 newly hatched salmon 
or on the point of being hatched, lying at the same 
time on the hurdles of a simple apparatus of not 
more than a square metre of surface. This result, 
obtained in such restricted space, gives some idea of 
what may be done on a large scale, and for a regularly 
organized trade. 

I give here a figure {plate 2, fig. 2) representing 



56 THE NEW AET OF BKEEDING FISH. 

this hatching apparatus, in order that landholders who 
desire to stock their streams, may have similar ones 
made. It is formed of several small parallel canals, 
disposed in steps on each side of the principal one 
at the top, which supplies them all. 

After having furnished each one of these canals 
with a willow hurdle, secured about an inch below 
the surface of the water, the machine is placed un- 
der a cock, so that the water, when turned on, will 
run into one end of the highest canal. The current 
will run to the other end, and there find two lateral 
openings, through which it will flow, right and left, 
in two little falls, into the next two canals. Through 
the length of these it will flow in an opposite direc- 
tion, and find at the other end openings through 
which it will again fall into other two canals, on a 
lower plane, and thus from fall to fall, it may pass 
through any number of compartments, or artificial 
streams, we may require. 

When the machine is in operation, we deposit on 
each of the hurdles placed in these artificial streams, 
the eggs to be hatched, the difi(erent kinds of which 
may be separately placed in the different compart- 
ments. The current must continually flow over them 
of the depth of an inch, which is sufficient to hinder 
the formation of byssus, a kind of vegetation which 
often destroys them, and from which in this way it 
is easy to free them as step by step all their changes 
are noticed. 

By these artificial means eggs are developed and 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 57 

hatched more speedily and surely than in places 
where the females deposit them, because they are 
preserved from all variations of temperature and ac- 
cidents that can retard, alter, or destroy them. Re- 
sults already obtained, after several years experience 
in hatching trout and salmon, leave no doubt of 
the efficacy of this process, or of its capability of 
adaptation on the grandest scale ; for with some 
slight modification, the machine I have described has 
served as the model upon which was constructed the 
vast apparatus of the establishment of Huningen, 
To operate with it is neither difficult nor expensive ; 
it can be used in a laboratory or on a farm, almost 
without supervision. All that is needed is a little jet 
of water flowing continuously. 

If the machine I have just described seems too 
complicated, one can be made like a single one of its 
compartments. I have several times used a simple 
wooden box, long and narrow, lined with zinc or lead, 
or even an earthen fish kettle {plate '^,fig. 3.) The 
eggs I have placed on the hurdles with which this 
wooden canal or fish kettle was furnished, have 
hatched in my laboratory as well as at the Chateau 
d 'Osman, in the department of Orne, the waters of 
which seemed to me well adapted for bringing up 
salmon. A very fine jet will suffice to feed the cur- 
rent, and when the fountain is emptied, it may be 
filled again, and the operation be thus carried on 
with little difficulty. It is not even necessary to 
have always fresh water, for that once used and re- 

3* 



58 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

ceivecl in a tub or tank, may be emplo3'ed again and 
again, provided it is freed from impurities each time 
by passing through a filter in the fountain. 

If one has neither a greenhouse, orangery, nor 
coach-house, in which to put up such an apparatus 
as I have described, and it is desired to hatch eggs 
in a natural streamlet, it may be done by procuring 
willow hurdles or large flat baskets resembling the 
one in the engraving {plate \^fig. 4). This basket 
should be so fastened to the bank that its top should 
be a little below the surface of the water. The fe- 
cundated eggs should then be spread over the bottom, 
either upon the willow or upon living aquatic herbs 
covering the bottom. 

A willow lid {plate ^,fig. 4 a), or any other suita- 
ble cover, should then be fitted to this basket, which 
will protect the eggs and young fry from their natu- 
ral enemies and destroyers, and this done, the 
hatching will take place without any further super- 
vision. 

If in the locality where the experiment is to be 
tried, there are not at hand either willow hurdles or 
baskets, or the means of making them, recourse may 
be had to shallow wooden tubs, pierced with a num- 
ber of holes, covered with wire graring, through 
which the water may freely flow over their contents. 
The eggs being placed in them, the tubs should be 
secured near the surface of the stream. 

One of the chief difficulties in the way of natu- 
ral reproduction is the absence from most streams of 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 59 

shallow shelving banks, with aquatic plants, offering 
the security which fish seek for depositing their 
spawn. So too in ponds, the sides of which are 
evenly dug out by the pickaxe, the water in which is 
every where of an equal depth, many of the common- 
est species either are barren or reproduce with great 
difficulty. The employment of baskets or tuba in a 
measure supplies such deficiencies, giving the means 
artificially of placing the eggs near the surface of 
the water, exposed to the rays of the sun, and, in 
fact, in a similar position to that which the instinct 
of the animal would choose as best suited to their 
development. 

The absence of running water sometimes prevents 
reproduction by certain species, though the animals 
live and prosper, and even spawn. Trout kept in 
ponds will spawn, the males will fecundate the eggs, 
but the eggs fall to the bottom and soon perish. The 
female labors in vain to keep them clean ; with all 
her care she can only do so for a very few days. 
They become covered with dirt, and the germ is de- 
stroyed unless laid in gravel and washed constantly 
by running water. 

Hatching apparatus overcomes these difficulties. 
It is only necessary to procure, by artificial means, 
the eggs and the milt of even such as are unproduc- 
tive ones in ponds, and by the aid of such apparatus 
young fish can be obtained to restock them. 



60 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 



CHAPTER THIRD. 



CARES THEY REQUIRE DURING INCUBATION. 

A FEW moments suffice for a very appreciable 
cliange which takes place in eggs artificially procured 
and fecundated. The contents seem troubled, become 
more opaque than at the moment of expulsion from 
the female, and then insensibly retake their transpa- 
rent hue ; but in the mean time a little spot, not pre- 
existing, begins to show itself on a point of the 
globe in the interior of the egg. This is caused by 
a coahtion of granules, forming what is termed the 
gerin, and the coalescence of oleaginous molecules 
which form about the germ. This modification, 
which has been erroneously supposed to be the cer- 
tain proof of fecundation, takes place as well with 
those eggs submitted to the action of the milt, which 
become impregnated, as with those that do not : at 
first both kinds appear exactly alike ; except that in 
the unimpregnated the phenomena is accomplished 
a little more slowly and irregularly. 

But if to the naked eye there is no difierence in 
appearance for the first few moments, or even for 
the first few days, all doubt will be removed by a re- 
course to magnifying instruments. 

The barren eggs deteriorate rapidly, become more 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 61 

and more opaque, turn white, or else preserve 
their transparency, but show no interior change. I 
have seen numbers of eggs of sahiion, trout, ombre, 
and pike appear thus up to the moment when other 
eggs preserved with them, of the same spawn, and 
submitted to the action of the same milt, had come 
to maturity and hatched. 

On the other hand, in eggs vivified with the fe- 
cundating molecules, one may see after a time, which 
varies- according to the species and to the tempera- 
ture of the water, on the interior globe a line, which 
covers about a quarter of its circumference. This 
line, which seems whitish when the eggs are on a 
dark ground, or opaque when they are held up to the 
light (in the manner in which our farmers examine 
hens' eggs), is the origin of the foetus, and represents 
the spinal column. As this line increases in size, 
one end of it grows out to a point to form a tail, and 
the other extends in the form of a spatula. This 
last corresponds to the embryo's head, and of this 
there is soon no doubt, for the eyes now appear, two 
points of a blackish brown, easily distinguished, and 
forming nearly two thirds of the whole mass of the 
head. As each day developes its form, the young 
fish may be seen under the shell or membrane, 
stretching itself, and drawing itself up, and wagging 
its tail. "When hatching time comes, these move- 
ments, the probable object of which is to weaken or 
tear the shell, become more active. With salmon 
and trout there is another sign of the approach of 



62 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

hatching besides the quick movements of the young. 
The outer envelope of the egg becomes a httle 
opaque, and as it were furfuraceous. With other 
species with which I have made observations, this 
sign does not appear so plainly. At last a little 
opening is made in the shell, and that part of the 
embryo next the opening comes through it. Ordi- 
narily the tail or the head first appears, but some- 
times it is the umbilical bladder. 

Whatever part may be first disengaged, more 
than half the body still remains imprisoned, and the 
efibrts of the young fish are unceasing, till after sev- 
eral hours it frees itself from the shell. This mem- 
brane, which has protected its development, hut has 
not sei'ved to form any part of its organs^ being now 
cast off, either is decomposed where it hes, or is car- 
ried off by the current. 

Certain kinds, like the pike and the ferrat, begin 
immediately to range about in the waters where they 
have just been hatched ; others on the contrary, such 
as the salmon and the trout, weighed down by their 
enormous umbilical bladder {pL 2, fig. 9), can only 
move with great difficulty, and remain lying on one 
side, or even on the bladder itself Some few at- 
tempt to move from one place to another, but soon 
give up the effort. 

The time for hatching is not the same with all 
species. Some, hke the pike, hatch at the end of 
eight, ten, or fifteen days ; others, hke the salmon, 
take from a month and a half to two months. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 63 

Besides, development is more or less hastened, 
according as the temperatm-e of the water in which 
they are laid is more or less elevated. Pike-'s eggs 
placed in a vase, the water of which without be- 
ing renewed was exposed to the sun's rays, hatched 
in nine days ; while others of the same spawning, 
placed in the shade in water constantly renewed took 
eighteen to twenty days to hatch. It required also 
twenty days to hatch eggs of the ombre, which, more 
favorably placed, hatched in twelve to fifteen days. 
Still greater variations of time appear in the incuba- 
tion of other species of the salmon family. In run- 
ning water of a warm temperature, the eggs of sal- 
mon and trout will hatch in about thirty daj^s, while 
the same eggs in a cold stream will take seven or 
eight weeks. The term of incubation may even ex- 
tend to a hundred and ten days, as was proved by 
the experiments made in Scotland, by Mr. Shaw, to 
which I have referred in the introduction. 

During their change the eggs should not be left 
to themselves ; they require, on the contrary, a cer- 
tain watchfulness and frequent visits, in fact, such 
care as can be easily bestowed by the aid of the 
hatching apparatus which I use. 

Whether the artificial streamlets, which I propose, 
be used, or in preference to them any other mode, 
one precaution should always be taken ; the eggs 
should never be heaped upon one another. Their 
accumulation prevents a proper surveillance of all of 
them, and besides may retard or even prevent their 



64 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

development. Another and more serious inconveni- 
ence often results : if one of the eggs becomes spoil- 
ed and covered with byssus, this byssus spreads to 
the adjoining eggs, and in a few days reaches all that 
are contiguous and destroys them. The only mode 
to diminish the extent or arrest the progress of this 
evil, when the eggs have not been heaped up, is to 
remove, at once, from the hatching place all that 
show the least trace of alteration. If in place of 
sacrificing, an attempt is made to save them by free- 
ing them, with the aid of a brush, from the vegeta- 
ble parasites covering them, not only will it be a use- 
less trouble, since the tainted eggs are already struck 
with death, but the evil will be aggravated by 
spreading over the healthy eggs the particles of de- 
structive byssus, by the very operation of cleansing. 

There are cases where the employment of the 
brush becomes indispensable and efficacious : as when 
sediment forms in a thick layer on the eggs, whose 
presence hinders the development of the embryo. It 
is necessary, then, to remove such matter by passing 
lightly over them a fine brush of badger hair, such 
as painters use. {PI. l,Jig. 7.) 

Lastly, the intervention of man becomes neces- 
sary when the larvge of insects, abundant in certain 
waters, attack the eggs : from these enemies he must 
deliver them. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 65 



CHAPTER FOUR. 

NURTURE OF THE YOUNO FISH. 

After being hatched, the youug fish observe a rigo- 
rous diet, the term of which, varying with different 
species, ceases with all when the umbilical bladder 
disapi)ears {pi. 2, fig. 10). They feel no hunger 
until after the nutritive elements contained in this 
bladder have been absorbed, and while it remains 
they refuse absolutely all other nourishment. My 
observations, on this subject, repeatedly made with 
different species, but principally with trout and sal- 
mon, agree in every point with those made by Jacobi. 
Like him, I have noted that trout do not begin to 
eat till towards the end of the fourth week, and tliat 
salmon do not require food till six weeks after birth. 
The knowledge of this fact is not without import- 
ance for practical purposes, since it fixes exactly the 
time when the feeding of the young fish should com- 
mence. To furnish them with food before the ab- 
sorption of the umbilical bladder, for example, on 
the fifth or sixth day, as Mr. Haxo,'"'' after the method 
of the two fishermen of Bresse, recommends for trout, 
would be censurable were it not utterly useless, for 
two reasons : first, young trout for the first month 

* Fecondation artificiellc et eclosion des ceufs de poisson. Epinal, 
1862, p. 66. 



66 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

of their existence possess all the nutriment they need 
in the umbilical bladder ; and next, they could not 
take and assimilate other food, if furnished them, 
their intestines not being sufficiently developed to 
receive and digest it. 

Independently of its uselessness, the practice of 
furnishing food too soon may be really hurtful, espe- 
cially if the young fish, artificially obtained, are con- 
fined in large numbers within restricted limits. Ani- 
mal matter furnished them, no matter in how small 
quantity at first, not being consumed, accumulates 
day by day at the bottom of the vessel, and in the 
end becomes corrupt, and thus, as 1 have seen seve- 
ral examples, becomes a cause of mortality. 

No matter, therefore, what kind of fish may be 
obtained by artificial means, there is no necessity to 
provide them with food until after the disappearance 
of the umbilical bladder. That most voracious spe- 
cies, the pike, even, is subject to this law, and I have 
now under observation some of that species hatched 
twenty days ago, which, having yet traces of the 
umbilical bladder, do not seek for food. 

With regard to salmon and trout it is not enough 
to know when the young should be provided with 
food, but also what kind of food should first be given 
them. This problem, on the solution of which de- 
pends the success of fish culture on a great scale, 
seems to me to have been resolved by the numerous 
and varied experiments made at the establishment 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 67 

at Huningen, and at my laboratory in the College of 
France. 

As early as 1849, as appears by a memoir on the 
domestication of fish and the formation of ponds, I 
had jDroved by actual experiments, that very young 
fish could be fed upon the raw flesh of domestic ani- 
mals, hashed, and that they would thrive and grow 
rapidly on this diet. This result, which I had ob- 
tained with young eels, confined by thousands in a 
very small space, I tried with salmon and trout. 
The muscular, raw flesh of full-grown animals, hash- 
ed up and pounded in a mortar till it was the con- 
sistency of pap, being given to them, I have observed 
them seize the isolated fragments and devour them 
with avidity. I had thus the certainty that this 
species of food suited them, and that I could bring 
up in a small space, as I had done with eels, a very 
large number of newly-hatched salmon and trout. 

The operation of reducing muscular raw flesh to 
minute fibrous particles, small enough to be readily 
swallowed by exceedingly little fish, is one that de- 
mands considerable time ; and the further difiiculty 
of separating and properly dispersing in the water 
the compact mass of flesh resulting from this opera- 
tion, led me to seek some more expeditious mode of 
feeding. 

To Mr. Chantrant, under whose charge is the 
hatching apparatus of the College of France, is due 
the idea of replacing raw by cooked meat. This 
substitute has had all the success I hoped for, and 



68 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

has enabled me to feed easily, and at small expense, 
and to bring up in a space 55 centimetres long, 15 
wide, and 8 deep, as many as 2,000 young salmon 
at once. The muscular flesh of boiled beef, which, 
by being pounded, grated and cut, is reduced to par- 
ticles j)roportioned to the size of the little animals it 
is to nourish, flesh reduced to that state that it will 
stick together in a mass but can be with greatest 
ease separated into the smallest particles, I have 
found, up to this time, the most suitable food for 
very j^oung fish just beginning to feel hunger. 

Experience shows that this food is better for 
them than calves' liver cooked, or beef's blood boiled. 
These substances are not sought by young salmon 
and trout with the same avidity as muscular fleshy 
fibre, prepared as I have just described. They pre- 
fer even the raw flesh of white fish pounded in a mor- 
tar, with which, for two years, Messrs. Berthot and 
Detzem fed and brought up those confined in the 
reservoirs of the establishment at Huningen. This 
flesh of fish, well pounded, breaks up, as does that 
of boiled beef, into vermiform particles, for which 
young salmon show great liking. 

As for the rest, whichever among these aliments 
may be the one adopted, if the little fish intended 
to be reared to the size at which they may be trans- 
ported, are kept in narrow, artificial streams, or in 
large vessels, wherein the water though changing has 
not a rapid current, care must be taken, in order to 
avoid accidents easy to foresee, to cleanse from time 



THE NEW AKT OF BREEDING FISH. 69 

to time, by means of a glass pipe, the bottom of the 
stream or vessel of the deposit formed of particles of 
animal matter which the fish have not eaten. 

I have thought that this inconvenience, which 
without great care is followed by serious results, 
might be easily avoided, if, in place of dead food, 
the young salmon and trout could be furnished with 
living prey. Although the results I have thus far 
arrived at in experimenting with this view are not 
yet confirmed by long practice, they nevertheless ap- 
pear conclusive enough to be reported. 

The spawn of the frog, so extolled by the fisher- 
men of Bresse, was the subject of my first experi- 
ment. The eggs of this animal were placed in ponds 
in which were hatching boxes containing young sal- 
mon and trout, and were there developed and hatch- 
ed ; but neither the tadpoles nor the albumen that 
enveloped them were sought by the young salmon 
and trout. I do not mean to say that such prey was 
not to their taste, but only that its size was too 
great for such little fish. If tadpoles are suitable 
food for fish a year or two old, I am convinced they 
cannot be fit for little ones which have just lost the 
umbilical bladder. I found it necessary, therefore, 
to abandon the attempt of feeding fish of that age 
with such food. 

I had recourse to another expedient and with 
happier results. Pike's eggs, artificially fecundated, 
being put to hatch in reservoirs in which were very 



70 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. " 

young salmon, the young that came from them were 
small enough to be easily swallowed by the salmon, 
and many persons have beheld with me the young 
salmon darting at them the moment they appeared 
from the eg^. Often they would even eat the mem- 
brane or shell of the egg from which the young had 
been hatched. 

I do not hesitate, then, to recommend this kind 
of food as the one most suitable, most resembling 
that obtained in a state of nature, and best adapted 
to the appetite of young salmon. And, besides, it is 
simple and easy, for it only requires the artificial fe- 
cundation of eggs, not alone of pike but of other 
kinds of white fish of little value, and the hatching 
of them either in separate boxes, or even in those 
containing the young they are to find. 

Another hving prey which young salmon and 
trout appear to relish greatly, consists of almost mi- 
croscopic Crustacea, of the species cythere, cypres, 
and Cyclops, etc., which can be found in great abun- 
dance, particularly in spring, in all stagnant waters. 
They can then be taken in such quantities as to 
serve as the chief food for very young salmon. These 
microscopic Crustacea, always in movement in the 
water, are for young salmon and trout an attractive 
food, they seek with avidity and thrive upon. 

Lastly, very small, newly-hatched earth-worms, 
are also a prey for which young salmon and trout 
have a predilection ; but it is not always easy to pro- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 71 

cure them in abundance, and tliey must therefore be 
considered as an occasional luxury. 

Whatever be the regime to which the young fish 
are submitted, whether living prey be obtained for 
them, or in default of it they are fed upon cooked 
meat, in all cases it is possible to bring them up, to 
the number of many thousands, within very narrow 
limits, and to cause them to grow rapidly until they 
attain sufficient size to be let loose in larger streams. 

But there the same care and the same provision 
of food should be extended to them. A perfect sys- 
tem of economy even requires their being furnished 
with food at all stages of their existence. Not only 
will this prevent those of a carnivorous species from 
preying on one another, but they will acquire soon a 
more beautiful shape and better qualities than they 
could do if abandoned to the resources which streams 
naturally offer. Means of feeding become more easy 
as the fish grow older. Thus, to salmon a year old, 
can be furnished with little trouble, in great abund- 
ance, tadpoles, the fry of white fish, and principally of 
minnows, aquatic mollusca, little fresh water shrimps. 
Those of a more advanced age will thrive upon the 
leavings of the kitchen, and upon the flesh of all 
kinds of domestic animals. 



72 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 



CHAPTER TIFTH. 



MEANS OF TRANSPORT OF EGGS OF FISH JUST HATCH- 



TRANSPORT OF EGGS, 

In China may be seen, towards the month of 
May, a great number of vessels collected in the great 
river Yang the Krang^ to buy there the seed of fish, 
a custom which has continued for ages. The coun- 
try people bar the river in many places for the space 
of eight or ten leagues with nets and hurdles, leav- 
ing only space for the passage of a single vessel. 
The seed of the fish is arrested by these hurdles, 
when these people perceive it, though a stranger's eye 
would not discover it. They dip up the water con- 
taining the seed of the fish and empty it into large 
vessels, which they sell to traders, who take it to the 
provinces, and resell it in smaller quantities to pro- 
prietors who own rivers, brooks or ponds, which they 
wish to stock with fish. 

The Romans did as the Chinese, and had re- 
course to the same means to stock their streams, 
applying them on a vast scale, sowing eggs as they 
would grain, and carrying this trade even to the ex- 
tent of hatching, in fresh waters, the spawn of sea 
fish, which they thought thus to accHmate. Thus 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 73 

the lakes Velinns, Sabatinus, Vulsinensis and Cim- 
nius, in Etruria, were stocked with barbie, goldfish, 
muges, and all species that could be adapted to this 
caprice, "'••" The rural descendants of Romulus and 
Numa practised this mode of breeding as a measure 
of public utility, which gave them, in their rustic 
life, an abundance which they carefully guarded. 
But towards the commencement of the seventh 
century, when luxury and vanity took the place of 
the simple manners of this ancient race, fresh water 
fisheries for the people began to be despised, and in 
their stead were sea fisheries for the rich. 

The transportation of eggs to great distances is, 
then, a fact, of which experience amply proves the 
possibility. The only question then is, how to trans- 
port them without waste, and in the most economical 
manner. 

The two fishermen of Bresse, Gehin and Eemy, 
put the eggs in a tin box, pierced with holes, like 
those they use for hatching. They cover the bottom 
with a bed of wet sand, half an inch or more deep, 
upon which they spread a layer of pebbles of the size 
of playing marbles. In the interstices of the peb- 
bles they place a certain quantity of fecundated eggs, 
and cover the first with a second layer of pebbles ; the 
interstices of the second layer are then filled with 
eggs, and then of another and another layer, till the 
box is filled. 

* Columelle, De re rtistica, b. vii. o. 1 6. 
4 



74 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. • 

This process presents defects which prevent me 
from recommending its application. Besides the 
exposure of the eggs to breakage between the stones, 
jumbled together by any shock received by 
the vehicle transporting the box, the holes with 
which the sides of the box are pierced, favor the 
evaporation of the water which keeps the sand wet, 
and exposes them to become dry. 

Very fine wet sand employed alone is far prefer- 
able. It should be thus used : Take a circular or 
oblong box, made of very thin white wood, such, for 
example, as are used for packing dried fruits (pi. 2, 
^g. 5). Then, on the bottom of this box, spread a 
bed of wet sand ; on this sand spread as many eggs 
as can lie together without touching one another. 
In fact, leave spaces between them that the second 
layer of sand will fill, to prevent the possibility of 
their pressing against one another. Then spread a 
second bed of wet sand, and on this, in like manner, 
a second bed of eggs, and so on, till the box is filled 
entirely, so that the lid will press upon the sand and 
prevent the movement of the contents of the box. 

A suitable box to carry eggs in this manner, 
should not be more than four inches deep, by eight 
or ten inches long, for if the dimensions exceed this, 
the weight of the sand will be too great for the eggs 
to bear. Partitioned off into compartments, a larger 
box would answer, but it is more simple and com- 
modious, if the quantity of eggs to be sent cannot 
be packed in one such small box, to use several such, 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 75 

and to tie the whole together or enclose them in a 
large basket. 

Placed in layers alternately with this wet sand, 
eggs of most kinds of the salmon family, that is to 
say of the sorts with shells of a certain toughness, 
can be perfectly preserved for many days, and even 
dming a month, if the box is kept at a somewhat 
low temperatm-e. This is proved by the following 
facts. Salmon and trout eggs, fecundated artificially, 
were put by Messrs. Berthot and Detzem, at the end 
of December, 1851, in a fir box filled with wet sand. 
The box was then for nearly two months kept in a 
cold room, but in which the temperature was never 
so low as freezing point. After the lapse of that 
time, the eggs were sent to me from Mulhouse. Be- 
fore taking them out I dipped the box in water, so 
that the saiid it contained might he gradually mois- 
tened throughout ; for had I neglected this precaution 
they would have perished, as did others not thus 
treated. The box being then opened, I found them 
a little withered or wrinkled ; but, placed in the 
hatching apparatus they soon retook their spherical 
form, and a large number of them gave birth to 
young fish. Doubtless there were many eggs that 
did not hatch ; but, under like circumstances, when 
eggs are sent to a distant place to propagate a foreign 
species, the number that can be hatched, however 
limited, will still, as in this instance, suffice for the 
purpose. 

This long sequestration in a box will not answer 



76 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH.* 

with like success in application to species that re- 
quire only a very short period for incubation ; for 
notwithstanding that in such circumstances, develop- 
ment of the embryo may be repressed, it still is go- 
ing on to a certain extent, and the eggs may be 
hatched in the sand before arrival at their destina- 
tion. With the eggs of salmon and trout this diffi- 
culty need not exist, for the time of incubation ex- 
tends to forty-five or fifty days at least, and is pro- 
longed even to a hundred or a hundred and ten days 
if the temperature of the water is very low ; but 
with such as hatch eight or ten days after being 
spawned the same results cannot be hoped for, nor 
can such kinds of eggs be conveyed to great distances. 
Ordinarily, we use advantageously aquatic plants 
instead of sand : we choose among the plants found 
in the waters where the fish are taken whose eggs are 
to be transported, such as are softest and least liable 
to become matted together. We place in the boxes 
alternately as with the sand, layers of leaves and of 
eggs. When the box is filled the lid is closed, and 
the humidity retained by the leaves suffices to pre- 
serve the eggs. For several years past, Messrs. Ber- 
thot and Detzem have sent me from the banks of the 
Rhine, and from the establishment at Huningen, a 
great number of these boxes, and I have had by 
these means often as many as 10,000 eggs at a time 
on the hurdles of my hatching apparatus at the Col- 
lege of France, almost all of which have been hatched. 
Recourse may be had to either of the processes I 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 77 

have described for packing eggs for transportation, 
since both modes have resulted satisfactorily. 

To be certain of transporting eggs to arrive in 
good condition for hatching, it is by no means imma- 
terial to select the proper period of their development 
for packing them. Of this I feel assm^ed from nu- 
merous experiments, at least ivith regard to the eggs 
of trout and salmon. Those which are packed in 
boxes to be sent a long distance, immediately after 
they have been fecundated, are much more sensible 
to destructive influences than those which are jDacked 
at the period when the embryo is so developed that 
through the shell or membrane its eyes may be per- 
ceived like tw^o black specks. In fact, this is the 
best time to transport them ; first, because they 
support the journey more readily, and next, because 
it is only then that we can know certainly that they 
really are fecundated. When the establishment at 
Huningen comes to be able to furnish eggs to every 
point in France, where secondary hatching apparatus 
may need them, we shall conform always to this rule 
for transportation, with the certainty it will be suc- 
cessful. Already we have practised it in several de- 
partments. 

TRANSPORT OF NEWLY-HATCHED FISH. 

The younger the fish are the easier it is to trans- 
port them a great distance. Even those destined to 
live in running water, which require it for hatching, 



78 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH, . 

as all varieties of the salmon family, can be preserved 
a long time in vessels, the water of which is not even 
frequently renewed ; but for this result they must 
be placed in them immediately after birth, and in 
the vessels must likewise be placed living aquatic 
plants. I have made on this point numerous experi- 
ments, which leave no doubt of the efficiency of this 
method. I have frequently put two hundred young 
salmon, or two hundred young trout, in a glass jar 
containing no more than three quarts of water, which, 
being renewed every three or four hours, I have thus 
been able to send them great distances, to places 
where it was believed these animals could not be 
acclimated, and where they are now thriving. 

If, instead of taking the trouble to renew the 
water from time to time, a continuous stream could 
be introduced into it, there is no distance, no matter 
how great, they might not be sent at this first stage 
of their existence. I have kept in the College of 
France as many as six thousand at a time, in wooden 
boxes or earthen vessels not larger than eighty centi- 
metres long, fifteen wide, and ten deep, with a 
stream of water no larger than a straw. The cur- 
rent made by this little stream was found sufficient 
to preserve them for more than a month in as sound 
a state as if they had been swimming in large 
streams ; and I have them still in such vessels and 
continue therein to rear them. Now, if the experi- 
ments which I have just cited, prove that we can pre- 
serve thus long in such restricted space, such a pro- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 79 

digious quantity of newly -hatched fish, without the 
necessity of furnishing them any thing else than an 
imperceptibly small stream of water, it is evident 
that through our rivers and canals, boats suitably 
arranged could carry them in masses to every part of 
France, so that there is not a single point at which 
they may not be distributed. 



TRANSPORTATION OF OLDER FISH. 

When they have attained a sufficient size to be 
suitable to stock streams, the young fish are much 
more difficult of transportation to a distance. Nev- 
ertheless, by recourse to boats converted into tanks, 
they can be thus carried great distances and distri- 
buted at all points on the voyage. Messrs. Berthot 
and Detzem last year dispatched one of these convoys 
from the government fish-establishment at Hunin- 
gen, wdiich arrived at Dijon in twelve days, having 
gone over by land and water a distance of 120 kilo- 
metres. Fifteen hundred salmon thus carried ar- 
rived in good condition and were deposited living in 
the basin of the Garden of Plants in Dijon. 

If the duration of the voyage requires it, food 
should be supplied to them ; but care should be ta- 
ken, in case this food consists of dead animal matter, 
that the vessel should be kept clean, because the re- 
mains of such decomposed matter left in it might 
prove destructive to them. It would be fitter and 



80 THE NEW ART OF BEEEDING FISH. 

more prudent to supply them only with young living 
prey of such a kind as formerly described. 

PERIODS 

OF SPAWNING OF CERTAIN KINDS OF FISH WHICH REPRODUCE IN FRESH 

WATER. 

NAME OF THE SPECIES. TIME OF SPAWNING. 

Salmon {Sahno Salar), From November to February. 

Salmon Huch {S. Hucho), April and May 

Trout {S. Fario), From October to February. 
Common Ombre {S. Thymallus), April and May. 
Ombre Chevalier {S. Umbla), February, March and April. 

Lavaret {S. Wartmanni), August, September and October. 

Fera {Coregomis Fera), January and February. 

%ii\D {Clupea Alosa), March, April and May. 

Pike {Esox Laceus), February, March and April. 

Carp {Cyprinus Carpio), From May to September. 

Bream (G Brema), End of April and May. 

Gibele (C Gibelio), May, June and July. 

Tench (C. T'mca), June and July. 

Perch {Perca Fluviatilis), March, April and May, 

J^ote — The periods indicated in this table, varying, according 
to places and climates, must not be considered as fixed, but as 
terms, considering which it is possible to guess pretty nearly the 
times at which the eggs of the different species will be likely to 
hatch by artificial means. 

In the year 1850, the attention of the French 
Government being called to the discovery by the 
two fishermen, Gehin and Eemy, of a mode of arti- 
ficial fish culture, the Minister of Agriculture and 
Commerce appointed a member of the French Aca- 
demy, a distinguished savant, M. Milne-Edwards, to 
examine into the whole subject, and make a report. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 81 

The following is a translation of the document sub- 
mitted by him : 

Report on artificial Fish-culture^ and on stocking 
barren or impoverished rivers luith Jish, artifi- 
cially .hatched ; made to tlie Minister of Com- 
merce by M. Milne- Edwards J member of the In- 
stitute. 

Sir: 

Owing to the interest which you feel in all dis- 
coveries calculated to increase the alimentary re- 
sources of the country, you desired to form a correct 
opinion of the attempts which, for some time, have 
been made, whether in France or in England, to en- 
sure the multiplication of fish, in ponds and rivers, 
and to augment the value of products of fisheries. 

You have done me the honor to submit this ques- 
tion to my examination, and have charged me most 
particularly to render a complete account of the re- 
sults obtained by two fishermen, who followed their 
trade near the sources of the Moselle, and who, by a 
process of artificial fecundation, have established in 
the department of the Vosges, a YQY\idih\Q fish factory. 
With pleasure I conformed to your wishes, and I will 
be well pleased, Mr. Minister, if the investigations I 
have made, can aid you in endowing our rural indus- 
try with a new source of wealth, the importance of 
which will not be undervalued by physiologists or 
agriculturists. Fish is an article of food, rich in nu- 
tritive qualities, and to augment its abundance, 

4» 



82 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. • 

either on our coasts or in our streams, will be a real 
benefit for all classes of population. Kiver fisliiug is 
generally little productive in France ; but it is only 
necessary to cast one's eyes upon the doings of our 
neighbors of other countries, to comprehend what 
might be its value, if means be found to stock with 
good fish our rivers and ponds, as amply as nature 
has stocked those of Scotland and Ireland, and as 
agriculturists stock their fields with herbivorous ani- 
mals, equally destined to serve our subsistence. 

Kiver-fishing has long been the object of enact- 
ments favoring the reproduction of fish, and pro- 
tecting the development of the fry. The royal ordi- 
nance of 1669, forms the basis of our legislation on 
the subject, and contains many clauses of incontest- 
able utility. 

Proprietors of j^onds bestow ordinarily some care 
upon stocking them, but all that relates to reproduction 
of fish in our rivers is left to mere chance, and while 
bitterly lamenting the constant and rapid decrease of 
their products, w^e have not, till now, given sufficient 
consideration to the remedies for the evil. 

Public attention was at last awakened to this 
question, by a lecture delivered two years since, at 
the Academy of Sciences, by one of our most distin- 
guished zoologists, M. de Quatrefages, formerly one 
of the Faculty of Science of Toulouse. This learned 
and elegant writer, gave our agriculturists useful 
counsel on the art of bringing-up fish, and strongly 
urged upon them the putting in practice a process of 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 83 

miiltii)lying their numbers, long well known to phy- 
bi()loo;ists, and offcn experimentally employed in tlieir 
cabinets, namely, that of artificially fecundating the 
eggs. We know by the labors of Spallanzani, and 
by the ex])eriment{d researches with which you, your- 
self, Mr. Minister, and your ancient colleague, Pre vest 
(of Geneva), twenty hve years since enriched science, 
tliat all fecundation is the result of the action exer- 
cised upon the egg at its state of maturity by the 
living spermatozoa with which the semen or milt is 
charged ; that this action takes place through the 
direct contact of these two reproductive elements, 
and that the physiological puissance of these same 
agents may be preserved during a longer or shorter 
period after they have been taken from the living 
bodies which have given them existence. 

With a great number of inferior animals the pa- 
rent's part in the work of reproduction, consists only 
in the formation and emission of these two generic 
elements ; the egg is not im[)regnated till, after be- 
ing spawned, it meets the spermatozoa, the contact 
with which, necessary to endow it with life, only 
takes place by the concurrence of exterior causes, in- 
dependent of the action of the parents, for example, 
by the course of the current in which the milt is de- 
posited. The experimentalist can, therefore, deter- 
mine at will this jihysiological phenomenon, by 
mechanically mixing the eggs and milt of these ani- 
mals, and the same results will be obtained by this 
process as by the natural one. 



84 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. . 

The observations of zoologists show, too, that in 
the general harmony of nature, the fecundity of 
animals is regulated, not only with regard to the 
causes of destruction to which the young are exposed 
before they become capable of reproducing their 
species, but also in view of the chances of nonfecun- 
dation to which the eggs are submitted, as the con- 
tact of the eggs with the seminal fluid takes place 
after they have been spawned and depends more or 
less upon chance. Fish belong, for the most part, to 
the category of animals among which there is no 
act of copulation for reproduction, that being effected 
simply by the ejection by the male of the milt or se- 
men upon the eggs which have been spawned by the 
female. 

To procure the development of the embryo, there- 
fore, in the otherwise sterile eggs, the naturalist, in 
the experiments of his laboratory, has only to imitate 
that which happens normally in nature ; that is to 
say, to bring them in contact with water charged 
with milt ; impregnation, then, is soon effected, and to 
procure this milt, as well as the eggs to be impregnated, 
all that is required is a light j)ressure of the abdomen 
of the males and females, whose products are ma- 
tured and whose lives will not be endangered by the 
operation : or these products may even be procured 
by opening the bodies of newly dead subjects, for the 
eggs and the milt preserve their vitality for some 
time after the death of the bodies containing them, 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 85 

and thus from two corpses may be l)rought forth a 
numerous and strong generation. '•'■ 



* This report of Mons. Edwards I have translated from a work 
entitled " Fecondation artificielle et eclosion des oeufs de poinsons, 
suivi de rejlexions sur I'ichtyogeide, par le docteur Haxo, d Epinal, 
Secretaire perpeticel de la Societe d' Emulation des Vosges, Memhre 
de la Societe des Sciences, Lettres, et Artsde Nancy, etc." The object 
of Dr. Haxo's work appears to be to prove the claim of the two 
fishermen of Yosges, Gehin and Kemy, to the title of discoverers 
of the method of ai'tificially impregnating and hatching fishes' 
eggs, by showing that they were the first to bring it into use and 
practically prove it could be done, and that all others had only 
theoretically treated the subject till these two poor fishermen took 
it in hand and showed to the world its value. Dr. Haxo claims 
it for them as their original discovery, on the ground that they 
wete so unlettered as to have been utterly ignorant of any re- 
searches or experiments of naturalists. He insists that they have 
been badly treated, their discovery stolen from them by natural- 
ists who have no right to it, yet claim it as their own, or as belong- 
ing to discoverers of a past century. Dr. Haxo brings several docu- 
ments to fortify his position, and comments with great warmth 
upon the injustice towards these fishermen displayed by M. Coste, 
in the work of which a translation forms part of this volume, as 
well as by M. Edwards in this report. As the details of the method 
pursued by Gehin and Remy, given in Dr. Haxo's work, are not 
fuller than those here given from the pamphlet of Godenier, and 
as his work seems for the most part a defence of the claims of Ge- 
hin and Remy as discoverers, I have not thought that a transla- 
tion of it would add to the value of this volume, as a manual of 
fiish culture. Dr. Haxo accompanies the publication of M. Ed- 
wards's report with many notes to show its injustice to the two 
fishermen ; as a specimen of them I quote this one referring to the 
passage above. — Translator. 

"After reading this passage who is there who would not be led 
to believe that the processes of artificial fecundation were not per- 
fectly known, at least by savants ? But notwithstanding this, M. 
de Quatrefages says not a woi'd of them in the memoir he presented 



86 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. • 

This fact was fully established by Count de Gold- 
stein, about the middle of the last century, long be- 
fore Spallanzani published his beautiful researches 
upon generation. In 1758 this judicious observer 
addressed to an ancestor of the celebrated Fourcroy, 
a most interesting memoir upon artificial fecundation 
of trout's eggs, and upon the application to stocking 
rivers of which the discovery was susceptible. 

An extract from Goldstein's work was inserted 
in a work called Soirees Helvetiennes, and some years 
later, in 1770, Duhamel du Monceau gave a transla- 
tion of it in the third volume of his Traite general 
des Feches, published under the sanction of the Aca- 
demv of Sciences. 



to the Institute in 1848 ; while on the other hand, when the letter 
which I addressed to that learned body on the 2d March, 1849, 
was read by M. Flourens it was received, according to the testi- 
mony of the Abbe Moigno, who was present at the meeting, with 
the most unequivocal demonstrations of surprise and satisfaction 
on the part of all the members of the Academy of Sciences. M. 
Milne-Edwards was then immediately appointed as one of the 
commission to examine my report in conjunction with Messrs. Du- 
m6ril and A^alenciennes. How does it happen that he did not 
then inform his colleagues that the matter had been long before 
known? How was it that he did not then and there announce 
that not only the processes of artificial fecundation had been very 
many years before described by Goldstein, by Duhamel du Monceau, 
and by Jacobi, but that they had been successfully practised in 
Scotland ? "Why did he wait, before making any such statements, 
until after he was officially charged by the Minister of Agriculture 
and Commerce, to go to the place and examine the results of the labors 
of the two Vosgian fishermen ? "We leave all such reflections as 
these to the sense of the reader." 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 87 

About the same period, a German naturalist, 
Jaoobi, pu])lished at Hamburg an er^ually interesting 
letter upon the art of bringing up salmon and trout, 
and on the production of these fish by means of arti- 
ficial fecundation. At a later date analogous experi- 
ments were made in Scotland by Dr. Knox, Mr. 
Shaw, and Mr. Andrew Young. In 1835, Signor 
Rusconi, so well known among naturalists by his 
work on the embryology of salamanders, published 
in the seventy-ninth volume of the Bihliotlieco, Itali- 
ana, new observations on the development of fish, 
and gives equally instructive details in artificial fe- 
cundation of the eggs of the tench and the ablette. 
At my suggestion, the translation of this memoir was 
inserted in the Annales des Sciences NatureUes, pour 
1836. 

I would add, too, that it was by recourse to this 
method of multiplication that Messrs. Agassiz and 
Yoght procured all the embryos necessary for their 
studies on the development of the palee, a species 
of salmon of the Swiss lakes, the anatomical history 
of which these two naturalists published in 1842. 
The philosophical fact, then, upon which M. de 
Quatrefages relied to stimulate agriculturists to the 
manufacturing of fish, in the same way they produce 
grain or meats, offered nothing new to zoologists, 
and to their remembrance M. de Quatrefages was 
the first to recall the claim of Goldstein as the dis- 
coverer of artificial fecundation. But under our sys- 
tem of education, truths well known by naturalists 



SS THK NKW AUT OF r^UKKlMN^; FISH. • 

inv miknowu l\v j\u>st othor inon ovon (ho luvst in- 
lormovl. and it was not viniuvossarv to oall |niMir 
attention toiviMy to tins application oi" soionoo to 
nnal ii\ilnstrv, whioh not onlv bad not pi\>tito<l by 
tbo ivsnbs of iho disoovory. bnt I think I can satoly 
atbnn that t)\oiv woiv thon not ton ai;rionhnral an- 
thors or toaoliors in all Kranoo who had tlio loast 
idoa ot" tho sorvioo whioh }>hysioK>i;ists had sv> loni; 
botoro rondoivd thoni. 

I lulor snob oii\'iunstanoos wo slu>nld not bo as- 
tonishovl [(> tind in vnio o( tho most soolndod valloys 
i>t* tho ohain ot' Vov^uvs. two illitorato tishornuMi, bnt 
ondowovl by namro with a raro spirit ot' obsorvation 
ai\d a nuvr poi^ovonuioo, boin^- ignorant ot' prior dis- 
oovorios, and wishinu' to tind some ivniody tor tho 
dooivaso and thivatonod oxtiuotion ot* thoir trado, 
oniploying sovond yoai's of thoir tin\o in laboriously 
making ovor aguin tho Si\n\o oxporinionts alawdy 
niado by tho physiologist I havo oiiod. and in iv-dis- 
an'oring what natnralists had boon aoqnaintod with 
tor a oontury. 

Bnt if thoso pvVM- poasants of Bivsso woiv pro- 
ivdod ii\ thoir ivsoaivhos by soiontitio men, and if 
thoy havo not onriohod natnnd history with fix^sh 
disoovorios, thoir labors aiv no loss worthy of intorost, 
and they have a claim ii^vn om- oonsidon\tion, H^r 
thoy soon\ to have boon tho tii"st among \is to make 
pmotioal applioation of tho disoovory of artitioial 
fecundation to the ivarino: of the tish, and have thus 



THK NEW ART OF I'.liEKUJSd KlfiU. 89 

the morit of creating in Fnmco a n';\v brarjf;}j of in- 
dustry/' 

The firHt CHHayH of McHHrH. G<;lj)n and It'^rny wore 
ina(l<3 in 1H42. Havin;jrby alon;(coiirH';of' obHr-rvalion 
beconio acrjnaintod with the rno(Jo of n;prod notion 
practiw^'d by trout, and bo'ing nmnrcA of tho poHn'i- 
bility of artificially fo-onndatin;^ itH ogj^K, tboy appJiod 
tbornsolvo'H to tijo [production of quantiticH of tijcw^ 
firth to Htock t}jo Htrcains of the canton. Huccckh 
crowned their effortH, and notwithHtandin;^ their fe(j- 
ble renourccH, and the difhcultieH of all H^>rtH they 
had to encounter, they Htiil obtained conHiderable 
rc8ultH. 

Tiiey were enabled to stock, with yoww^ trout 
artificially hatched, two pondn near their villa^^e of 
BrcBse, one of whicii furninhrxl last year 1200 trout 
of two yearH old. 

Gehin and Kerny estimate at about 50,000 the 
number of young fish they liavc put in the Mowdottc, 
a little river of J'ress^i, which empties into the Mo- 
selle near Itemiremont ; they have put in pnu;tico 
their mode of stocking in several other localities of 
the same canton, as appears by documents furnished 
by the authorities of Saulxures, of Cornimont, and 
of Gcrardmer. Besides these, M. Kienzi, Mayor of 



* M. VAwurd", in thin para(^raph of his* report, fif:':rnn U^coucede 
to the two fiAiarxiihu all tliat can he cliumf-A ior ihhin an di»cover- 
er-j of u mode of renderinir a dineovery u-ieful and valuable; not 
withstandinj^ I>r. llaxt/a pamphlet t<j prove the injuitice of M. 
E'lwarli and others toward", them. — 7'randator. 



90 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

Waldenstein, in the department of Haut-Rhin, de- 
puted them to re-stock the water-courses of his com- 
mune, and this intelligent official gives assurance 
that they perfectly succeeded. 

I would add also, that, wishing to render the 
discovery of the widest public utility, our fishermen 
never made any secret of their processes, but, on the 
contrary, readily initiated any one who desired to 
undertake similar work. All wdio have ever had 
occasion to witness the labors of Gehin and Remy 
bestow on them the highest praise. 

I visited their establishment and witnessed some 
of their experiments. The Society of Emulation 
took up and fully investigated the subject, and be- 
stowed on each of these worthy men an honorary 
medal. The work they proposed it seems to me 
they fully succeeded in, and to render their country 
great service they only need the means to extend 
their operations. I do not judge solely by the re- 
sults obtained by Gehin and Remy, but also by simi- 
lar ones on a large scale, which I found to have been 
obtained for several years past in Great Britain, and 
which had excited there considerable interest. 

In fact, M. Boccius, a civil engineer of Hammer- 
smith, has practised artificial fecundation in stocking 
several rivers of Great Britain, and seems to have 
had complete success. 

In 1841 he worked in the streams belonging to 
Mr. Drummond, in the neighborhood of Uxbridge, 
and he estimates at 120,000 the number of trout he 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 91 

there brought up. The following years he put in 
practice the same processes on the magnificent do- 
main of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth ; 
then for Mr. Gurnie, at Carsalton ; and Mr. Hilbert, 
at Chatford ; finalh^, the Angler's Club put under 
his charge the important fishing-ground of Ansval- 
Magna, in the county of Hertford, and M. Boccius 
assured me that he had already artificially hatched 
there at least 2,000,000 trout. He has pub- 
lished a book uj^on his method of stocking streams, 
and it seems that a society is about to be formed, 
under the patronage of Sir H. Labouchere, with a 
vievv of attempting to stock the Thames with salmon. 

The process emploj^ed by Gehin and Eemy is 
very simple and easily practised ; it hardly differs 
from that adopted by Boccius, and equally resem- 
bles the method described by Jacobi, nearly a 
century ago. 

Trout-breeding takes 23lace in December, and in 
order to have eggs for artificial hatching, it suffices 
to press lightly, before and behind, the abdomen of 
a female fish ready to hatch ; and her eggs in falling 
should be caught in a vessel with water, and after- 
wards S2)rinkled with milt obtained in the same 
manner and diluted. 

If the eggs have not arrived at their term when 
operations are commenced, they will only be run out 
with a strong pressure, and in such case the fish 
should be left in a preserve during some days, before 
this forced birth is adopted, for neither the eggs nor 



92 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. . 

the milt can be usefully employed in a state of im- 
maturity, and the life of the parent fishes would be 
endangered by rough handling. 

On coming in contact with the spermatised wa- 
ter, the eggs change color : before fecundation they 
are transparent and yellow : so fecundated they be- 
come whitish or rather opaline. A trout aged some 
two years'*-' and weighing about 125 grammes, can 
furnish about 600 eggs ; a trout of three years, 700 
to 800 ; and it is also to be noted that the milt of 
one male is enough to fecundate the eggs of a half-a- 
dozen females or even more. Messrs. G-ehin and 
Kemy placed the eggs so fecundated in a tin box 
pierced with holes on a gravel-bed : these boxes are 
about fifteen centimetres in diameter, and eight 
deep, and can contain each a thousand eggs. They 
are then to be placed in some streamlet of which the 
waters are pure and lively, but not deep : in this 
they are partially buried, and so disposed that the 
water in the boxes is rapidly renewed, for the agita- 
tion of it is necessary to assure the respiration of 
the embryos, and also to hinder the development of 
confervas, which will not be slow to catch and de- 
stroy the eggs if the water be stagnant. The de- 
velopment of these embryos lasts four months, and 
it is generally towards the end of March or in April 
that the hatching takes place ; during six weeks 
more, the new-born trout carry under the abdomen 

* Experience shows that the trout does not become nubile or 
fit for propagation before the age of three years. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 93 

the umbilical vesicle which holds the remains of tli^ 
nutritive matter, analogous to the yolk of a bird's 
eirs:, and at first by means of this substance the 
minnows are nourished : but when absorption takes 
place the young fish have need of other nutriment, 
and should then be driven out of the box in which 
they are cradled, and permitted to swim freely in the 
streamlet which they are to stock. 

In fine, to procure for these little fish suitable 
and abundant nourishment, it is only necessary to 
leave or put in the water some frogs, whose spawn 
they will greedily eat, while the tadpoles afford ex- 
cellent food for the older trout. When the young 
trout so brought up, are destined to stock a river, 
they should be placed in streams tributary to it, and 
water selected which rushes over pebbles or rocks. 

In proportion as these fish grow, they descend 
spontaneously to the deep water, whither they ar- 
rive only when they are sufficiently agile to protect 
themselves against the enemies which they may en- 
counter ; while if they are at once placed in the 
midst of other voracious fish, they will have but a 
small chance of escaping death. When they are so 
raised in streamlets or ponds, precaution must be 
taken to separate the product of each year from the 
former one, as the big trout will otherwise eat up the 
little ones ; and to avoid this the young fish in the 
same circle should be of one age. 

To establish after a regular fashion this branch 
of production, there should be at least three stream- 



94 THE NF.W AKT OF UUF.KIM N\; FISH. • 

lot8 or brooks, lor tlio iisli to bo oliai^i^vd durinp;' 
ihroo veal's, now ouos boiiig" phuwl in tluMn as last 
as o\hanstod. 

rnhappily Messrs. Gehin and luany have not at 
their disposal the neoessarv funds to i>oniplete this 
work. They have c>btained the e;rant oi' a tish-pond 
for this purpose, and bought another for 800 tVanes ; 
but now their jieeuuiary means are gone, and if, 
sir, under your kind proteeti»>n, tliey do not get 
some help from (loverunient, 1 tear it will be impos- 
sible for them to piu'sue the trials so satistaetorily 
eommeneed. 

'V\w labors oi^ ^lessrs. Gehin and Kemy appear 
to me the more worthy of eneouragenient, as sueeess 
ean atVonl but little prolit to sueh devoted and ae- 
tive men, but will contribute to increase the alimen- 
tary resources conunanded by the people on the 
banks ot' streams. Only in considering tisheries as 
works oi' public utility and causing them to be ex- 
ecuted by the state, can we hope to give real im- 
portance to our river tisheries : but in applying a 
small Sinn to this end, we will arrive, I have no 
doubt, at important results for the country. 

If the tish-breeding practised by Messrs. Gehin 
and Remy were only applicable to trout, and to 
other iish of limited supply, I would not attach as 
much inteivst to it as I do : but it may be applied 
to salmon, and I am convinced that it would be 
easy thus to restore to the rivers of Brittany icthyolo- 
gical riches which are now disappearing, and even to 



Tin-; NKW ART OF nuKF«:r)iNrj firit. 05 

aodiiiuitc; Haliiioii in livc^rH, wliicli, iij) to IJiIh tinH', 
have not been rrcfjiiciilrd l)y tlml, iisli. 

NoMiiii;^ in ('!iHi(!r iJiaii to t ijuisporl, c'^'^h jiihI> 
Ijiid,''' or liviti;;- Halmoii, ol' vvliicli IIk; jiIxIoiiicii is 
1111(3(1 (!illi('i" wiUi <'m^H or niill. ; mikI (ivori wli(;ii tlic-sr! 
(li(5 on tli(! rojid, IIk; liaicliii)^ of tli(.'ir (3^^h can bo 
attained, in placin;^ llio ('<ji;gH so acquired in stroam- 
IciH |)roj)('rly clioKcn, IIk; younjj^ Halrnon will {^row an 
tlioii^li Hpavvncd llicn; l>y their parcntH ; tlicy will 
enuj^rate as usnn,! to the o(;(!an, and in itH <l(;[)thH 
they in turn will H[)awn, and will not (iiil to return 
in {;T(^at nuinherH to the; Htn^am whence tlu^y pro- 
ceeded, and in following- itH courH(i wm^U a j)ropr'i- 
fdacci lijr the ;^rowth of theii- [)i-o;r(.|iy. 

W(; know, in (act, by (;x[)(!rirn<;ntH ali(tady old, 
niad(i in iJiittany by DelandcH, and l)y obs(;rvationH 
of the Kanie kind, repeated in our (hiy, in Scotland 
by the Duke of Ath(jl, Sir W. Jardine, Mr. I>ai^ri(;, 
Mr. IlayKhan and Mr. Youn^, th(j i)in;ctor oC the 
fisheric^H of the Duke of Sutlierland, that j^uided by 
a Hin<^ular iuHtinct comparable to ini<^ratory Kwallows, 
the salnion after having emigrated far into the sea, 
rcturn.s ordinarily to the water where it was spawned, 
and the individuals of the same species are so per- 
petuated in certain rivers without mixing with those 
(jf strange waters. It seems to me consequently 
indubitable, that in the space of a few years, it 

* With <lu<! i'('Hp(;';l to M. Miliu; Iv1\vjiP(1h, tlie IrariHport, of Kiicli 
eggn is very (lifTiciilt, and if this flifTiciilty Ikih finally bocii obviated 
by Gdhin it in only after much groping and research. 



96 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. . 

would not only be possible greatly to multiply sal- 
mon in all the waters natural to them, but to intro- 
duce and acclimate this large and valuable fish, in 
many of our streams hitherto without them. For 
the salmon and the trout also, as well as for many 
other kinds, the method of Grehin and Remy appears 
to be the surest mode of stocking rivers ; but we 
cannot have recourse to the artificial fecundation of 
eggs to stock fresh waters of certain kinds, of which 
the introduction, however, would be of great utility 
in certain localities. Thus, eels are never caught at 
maturity with milt or eggs, and these fish seem to be 
only produced in the depths of the sea, whence just 
spawned they go in legions innumerable every year, 
to occupy rivers, wdiere they are known by our fish- 
ermen under the name of monUe. 

To supply brooks and streams needing them, such 
spawn must be transported, and the operation re- 
newed periodically ; and M. Coster has shown that 
this transportation can be easily efi'ected, even to 
considerable distances. 

For this purpose it is sufficient to place the 
young eels in grass kept wet. The experiments 
which M. Coster is now pursuing at Paris in the 
laboratory of the College of France, proves that 
young eels can be fed at small expense, so that they 
will grow rapidly, and it seems to me that in many 
marshy places, raising eels would be profitable. 

If I had to treat here of marine fishing I would 
ask of you, sir, permission to call your attention to 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 97 

several matters toucliing the treatment of our 
oyster-beds, and the means of favoring the mul- 
tiplication of these molecules. A manufacturer 
of Charente, M. Carbonnel, has conversed with the 
Academy of Sciences several times lately, and thinks 
it would be easy to establish on our coast at differ- 
ent points such artificial oyster-beds. M. de Quat- 
refages has also requested the naturalists on our 
coasts to try the artificial fecundation of oysters, 
and I am persuaded that in studjdng experimentally 
all that relates to the generation of these molecules, 
we shall arrive at results extremely interesting for 
industry as well as science. But in the actual state 
of our knowledge relative to the physiology of these 
animals, we cannot ]3ronounce on the value of the 
mode of multiplication which the authors I have 
just cited propose to employ. 

Whatever it be, after the entire results of which 
I render you an account, and after experiments 
analogous to those of Messrs. Gehin and Remy, 
made by M. Lefebvre, of Yaugorard, it seems clear 
that with perseverance, we can with little expense 
ameliorate the icthyological breed of France, and 
obtain also for our territory covered with water, a 
revenue much more considerable than that now de- 
rived. 

This would be for the whole country, an increase 
of riches, and trials of this kind appear to me all 
the more important as several circumstances tend to 
diminish the alimentary resource of our rivers. Th ? 

5 



98 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FlSIf. 

increasing rarity of fish, in a great number of our 
rivers, does not arise solely from the manner in 
which fishing has been pursued, but from other 
causes, among which is the extension of manufac- 
turing industry. Thus the toll-gates established 
in such numbers for the service of hydraulic motors, 
are so many obstacles to the production of various 
fish, which require to ascend the rivers to their head- 
waters to find fit spawning spots, and single propa- 
gators arriving in smaller numbers in the streamlets, 
the fish interests of the river sufi*er, for the eggs are 
not in a condition favorable to the development of 
the J'^oung, and the means of recruiting the entire 
species is rapidly lessened."-'' If, as in Scotland, and 
even in England, there existed in France, many rich 
proprietors who possessed water-courses of considera- 
ble extent, we could leave to the care of private in- 
dividuals all matters relating to improved river- 
fishing, for to whomever one of these streams be- 
longed, he would be interested in increasing its 
products. 

But with us it is altogether otherwise, and the 
individual who would occupy himself with stocking 
a stream with fish, could hardly hope to reap per- 
sonal profit therefrom : he would augment the ali- 
mentary resources of his fellow- citizens, and thus 

* It is worthy of remark that waters of paper manufactories, 
"which contain so large a quantity of chlorine for wliitening the 
rags, are injurious to fish. It is one cause of destruction worthy of 
note. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 99 

render his country solid service, but he alone would 
enjoy but a small interest in the benefit so diffused, 
and ordinarily would want the stimulus to undertake 
the labor. 

The stocking of rivers, then, should be considered 
a work of public utility, and it seems to me that it 
is the business of the state to look after it. 

Trials of this kind made on a great scale, and 
prudently conducted, and confided to intelligent 
men, would not involve heavy expenses to lead to 
important results. If you judge proper to have 
them executed, you will find in the two fishermen in 
question, capable agents, and I would add that the 
charge of such work would be the least recompense 
the government could make them. 

For the rest, such an enterprise would necessitate 
serious preliminary studies, and give rise to several 
questions, for whose solution the opinion of the admin- 
istration of waters and forests would be necessary, as 
well as the light of naturalists, and it would perhaps 
be necessary to have a mixed commission. To sum up 
— we perceive that the stocking of fresh waters with 
artificial methods was long since thought of, but it 
has only been tried in France lately ; that Messrs. 
Gehin and Kemy appear to have been the first to 
put the method in practice among us, and that for 
their part they have arrived at results analogous to 
those obtained at the same period, in England, by 
Mr. Boccius ; that the labors of these two fishermen 
are worthy of attention, and that in applying to the 



100 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH* 

reproduction of salmon^ the means they have suc- 
cessfully used to rear trout, we shall be enabled 
largely to increase the interests of our river-fisheries. 
I have the honor, &c., 

Milne-Edwards. 



Bepo7i on the means of stocking all the streams of 
France luithfish, addressed to the Minister of the 
Interior, of Agriculture and of Commerce. 

Paris, July 12, 1852. 

Sir : — In your letter of the 30th June, you ask 
me to visit the fish-breeding establishment at Mul- 
house, of Messrs. Berthol & Detzem, engineers of the 
Rhone and Khine Canal, and to suggest to you mea- 
sures so that their works can be made to stock all the 
streams of France. Accordingly, I now put you in 
possession of the result of this mission. 

The discovery of artificial fish-breeding, was long 
hidden in the laboratories of science, where it re- 
mained confined to physiological experiment ; but 
lately it has been practically set forth by the Count 
de Goldstein, by Boccius, and above all, by the two 
fishermen of Bresse, and sober inquiry and trial have 
been adopted to attain to the precision of pure method 
in regard to it. 

I have shown, for my part, with the assistance 
of Messrs. Berthol & Detzem, that not only the eggs 
of fish, brought from very distant waters, preserve 



THE NEW ART OF BKEEDING FISH. 101 

all their native powers of conception, but that by- 
means of machinery, extremely simple, they can be 
hatched much more quickly and certainly than as 
the female ordinarily lays them ; so that two sets 
are obtained in the ordinary time of one. 

This double result, that of carrying without in- 
jury, eggs to a great distance, and their rapid fecun- 
dation, leads to the possibility of restocking all the 
streams of France, in a single season ; so that it will 
cost nothing to the state but the necessary advances 
to organize an establishment, wherein the spawn ac- 
cumulated from all points where they are easily se- 
cured, should be confided to the care of the canal 
keepers. I say it will cost the state nothing, be- 
cause the advances can be readily more than repaid by 
a contribution, voluntarily self-imposed by the pro- 
prietors in exchange for the precious gifts made them, 
whether in the form of eggs or young fish. 

The more I reflect on the means of realizing this 
useful enterjDrise, the more I consider it our duty to 
insist that France shall take the lead in giving a 
practical example of this great scientific discovery, 
which can so increase public wealth by creating an 
inexhaustible means of production. It is a wish I 
express with all confidence, because I have visited the 
spots where the project has already received an im- 
petus under the auspices of two engineers, who, not- 
withstanding their limited resources, have raised, this 
year, a million trout, salmon, and mongrels ; the 
greater portion of which they showed me scattered 



102 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH.* 

through the ponds which they have dug along the 
Khone and Khine canal. 

It only remains to profit by the experience and 
devotion of which they have, during two years, 
given so many proofs, and to place in their hands 
sujSicient means to transform the precarious arrange- 
ments due to their perseverance into a veritable 
establishment, where, as in the best regulated 
manufactories, the working details are ample and 
ready. 

The locality which they have chosen, is admira- 
bly well adapted to their purpose : a stream of fresh 
water, clear as crystal, runs from the foot of a shel- 
tering hillock on a common of several acres, and then 
branches off into smaller streams. This so well fitted 
to fish-hat cliing, especially of trout and salmon, could 
be easily turned into a vast breeding establishment. 
It would be only necessary to substitute for the sieve- 
boxes hitherto used (which offer obstructions and be- 
come less and less permeable), simple plates placed 
longitudinally in parallel partitions, which will divide 
the stream into narrow drains more or less numerous, 
through which the water will flow with some degree 
of rapidity. These drains intended to receive the 
eggs, will be cut at intervals so as to form a succes- 
sion of falls, in order to hasten the course and give 
an airing to the water, and produce conditions most 
favorable to the end in view. Each one of these 
drains should be extended in a meadow, without 
being confounded with the others, and finish by en- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 103 

largement in a spacious basin, where the water in 
question alone has access, and whither will come the 
young fish when hatched, — another place of destina- 
tion being in store for them. 

When this stream will have been so transformed 
into a vast estabhshment, made after the plan I have 
indicated, it should be covered with a glass roof like 
a greenhouse, admitting the light, and formed of mo- 
vable panes turning round, so that the air may be 
readily admitted when deemed necessary. To this 
should be added a little house, to protect the work- 
men, where a workshop of all the necessary imple- 
ments would be, and also a register of the results of 
each day's observations. The natural history of fish 
so obtained, would offer invaluable details. When 
this estabhshment would be ready, the problem would 
be reduced, simply procuring eggs sufficient to fill it, 
and thence to stock all the streams of France. This 
would not be difficult to realize. 

Being on the frontiers of Germany, Messrs. Ber- 
thol & Detzem are in communication with the fish- 
ermen of the river and the great lakes where are fish 
the most esteemed. These fishermen have underta- 
ken to give them all kinds of eggs. Messrs. Berthol 
& Detzem have already taken from Lake Federsee, 
thirty-six gigantic fish, which so transferred, I have 
seen in their basins. They are waiting now for a sup- 
ply of young fish of this kind, which bear the journey 
so easily, that I obtained three for the College of 
France, by simply putting them under the care of 



104 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. • 

the conductor of the diligence, who kept them two 
days and a night in a vase. These fish hatch even 
in turf-pits ; so that they can be easily propagated 
in those of Picardy, and in the least favorable waters. 
Their importation, then, will be a service rendered 
to fish-breeding. 

In hatching fish in new waters, trials of their ac- 
climation can be successfully made. I may give here 
striking examples in citing my experiments at the 
College of France, under circumstances where I did 
not promise myself any success. Young salmon, 
hatched in my laboratory, and placed afterwards in an 
artificial pond fed by a single stream of the water of 
the Arcueil, grew as well as if they had lived in the 
Ehine, as I was able to satisfy myself by a compari- 
son. They are hardly four months old, and already 
their length is 60 milemetres, of which they have 
gained 12 during the last twenty-four days ; a re- 
markable growth, which may be attributed, without 
doubt, to the particular nourishment they receive, 
of which they show themselves greedy. 

But to return to our hatching apparatus, and the 
eggs which are in progress of development : — Here a 
second problem is presented — what becomes after 
birth of the young fish hatched by millions in the 
narrow drains where the eggs were deposited ? This 
second problem will not be more difficult to answer 
than the first. The arrangement of the locaUty will 
answer for all exigencies. As soon as the newly- 
hatched fish are strong enough to swim, they will fol- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 105 

low the course of the stream, which will draw them 
to the meadow by the extremity of the glass-house 
through which the current passes, and leave them in 
the basin. There they will grow ; but their number 
increasing every day, they cannot be long kept in 
this narrow reservoir. Larger basins then must be 
provided, where they can grow with proper nourish- 
ment. The dependencies of the Rhine and Rhone 
Canal will fulfil this office, and on a scale so vast, 
that there will be a crop greater than one would sup- 
pose room could there be found for. Thus : — The 
government has on the borders of the canal, on the 
right and left, — land in length 117,730 metres, and 
breadth 15 metres. Already there they have dug a 
certain number of ponds, well supplied with water. 
These ponds may be multiplied indefinitely and con- 
nected by gratings, so as to prevent the admixture 
of the different kinds of fish, and stopped off occa- 
sionally in order to admit of being severally emptied, 
so that the young fish can be taken from them. But 
the ponds already dug on one side of the canal are in 
the same part of the meadow with the receiving ba- 
sins, into each of which the hatching trenches will 
carry a particular species ; and it results from this, 
that to transfer the young of this species from the 
establishment where they were hatched to the ponds 
where they are to be converted into larger growths, 
there is almost nothing to do. The operation will be 
self-accomplished, so to speak ; and from the single 

5* 



106 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

circumstance of a happy distribution of the different 
waters which run from one side to the other. 

When the spawn have arrived at the growth of 
young fish suitable for stocking streams, the Rhone 
and Rhine canal, which runs between the two long 
lines of ponds where these fish are kept in reserve, 
will itself be the natural means to conduct them into 
all the waters of France by means of their intercom- 
munications. To attain to this object, a jointed raft 
should be made of pieces of wood transversely placed, 
and connected by iron rings, and in the interstices of 
this raft would be fastened casks sufficient to hold 
the entire supply of fish. These casks should be pro- 
vided with gratings so as to be permeable, and con-, 
tain water-plants, so that the young fish are not in- 
juriously crowded. 

The convoy so disposed should stop successively 
before each pond, and right and left, the workmen 
attached to the ordinary service of the canal, will 
empty into it the fish drawn from these drains ; then 
the cargo completed, the raft will be set in motion, 
and the casks with their bottoms knocked out from 
time to time, will sow the fish, as a plow would sow 
seed if capable of doing thus as fast as it made fur- 
rows. 

When the convoy will pass the point of junction 
of another water-course, one of its sections, as they 
are fastened by rings, could be detached as a wagon 
is from a train, and given to the engineers of the 
country traversed by this stream of water ; these en- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 107 

gineers will take the portion of the convoy in 
question, in order to empty it in the localities which 
appear to them the fittest to the purpose, and so as- 
certained beforehand, and then will return it to the 
point of departure, so that on its arrival thither, the 
great convoy may unite all the detached fragments, 
and render them to the establishment in order to take 
a fresh load if the first has been insufiicient, or to 
wait until a second crop requires a new journey. 

The restocking of all the waters of France, will 
be accomplished then easily, since, on the one hand, 
the officers of the roads and bridges will answer for 
the requirements of the service, and on the other, 
the organization of the entire establishment will re- 
quire but a first expenditure of 22,000 francs, necessa- 
ry for the construction of the shed, the guard-house, 
the digging of the ponds, the purchase of tools, and 
of twenty acres of ground to be inclosed in the com- 
mon already given by the municipal council of the 
locality. 

The first expenditure, or an annual credit of 
8,000 francs, will suffice to commence the work, to 
procure the species most valued, meet the cost of the 
daily labor, and give the production an infinite ex- 
tension. 

It will be perceived, therefore, that this sum is 
the smallest trifle compared with the riches it will 
produce, for here nothing less is aimed at than to keep 
the supply of food up to the increased consumption, 
according to the duty imposed on governments : hesi- 



108 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

tation in such case is allowable only when an adequate 
trial renders success doubtful ; but here experience 
has already furnished such positive results, that there 
cannot be the least doubt of the success of the ope- 
ration. 

Time presses, sir ; and there are only three 
months before we come to the breeding season of 
salmon and trout. If at that time the apparatus is 
wanting, we lose the most interesting part of the re- 
quired work. I trust, then, you will give me the 
order for a credit of 30,000 francs, immediately open 
to the engineers of the Rhone and Rhine Canal, and 
I shall be happy to offer you my assistance for the 
organization of an establishment so founded, and to 
take my part in the responsibility of an enterprise 
which will be a signal honor to the administration. 

I cannot terminate this Report, sir, without 
speaking to you of the propagation of fresh- water 
shell-fish ; experiments which I have made under 
the hope of applying them to salt-water shell-fish, 
whose multiplication would not be difficult to secure. 
Here, then, is an account of these experiments : — 
I placed, at the College of France, in a basin, 
like that wherein my young salmon live, fed by a 
rivulet, a certain number of female craw-fish, all car- 
rying under the tail their eggs. At the end of twen- 
ty-five days, all these eggs were hatched, and the 
basin was usurped by a myriad of young craw-fish, 
which grew perceptibly. This result proves how 
easy it is to restock all running streams which an 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 109 

abuse of fishing has devastated, as though they had 
never been supplied. The question is reduced sim- 
ply to setting apart at the breeding season, in the 
reservoirs in the form of little brooks communicating 
with creeks or rivers, all the females who have their 
eggs attached to the appendices of the tail, and not 
to allow their consumption until their offspring is 
hatched. This offspring, retained afterwards for a 
period in propagating streams, would not be allowed 
to swim through the gratings until capable of taking 
care of themselves. 

As to salt-water shell-fish, France possesses on the 
Mediterranean shore, immense salt marshes, where 
the females of these animals could also be retained 
till the moment of hatching their eggs, as they carry 
them under the tail like the craw-fish. If the ex- 
periment succeed, and these spawn increase on the 
spot sufiiciently fast, they may be fattened in these 
vast receptacles. If, on the contrary, the conditions 
are unfavorable, they should be at liberty to go at 
large to seek another spot and stock our coasts. 

But this is not the only use to which these marshes 
can be put. The sea-fish are too much liked not to 
suggest the means of multiplying them, either by 
artificial fecundation, or by transporting the young 
fish of certain kinds. In favoring the realization of 
such an enterprise, the state will have created in a 
few years, ponds much richer than the artificial pis- 
cines which were dug at so great an expense by the 
Komans, by the Gulf of Naples ; piscines among 



110 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

• 

which, however, those of Lucullus produced no less 
than four railhon sesterces, at a sale where presided 
Cato of Utica, in quahty of tutor to the son of this 
famous epicurean. The care of these immense reser- 
V(nrs would be confided to the customs officers of the 
coast, and would not involve, consequently, expense 
beyond that of fishing in the waters. 

While these measures were taken to secure the 
multiplication of salt-water fish, it would naturally 
lead to the means of selling them for consumption at 
a price so moderate, that districts farthest off from 
their production could compete for having a supply 
of such alimentation for the laboring classes. You 
will find, sir, on this question materials for documents 
of great importance in practical details, from time 
immemorial, on the marshes of Commachio, whose 
waters are constantly changed by the flux and reflux 
of the Adriatic. There a population of about four 
hundred men, disciplined as if aboard ship, is occu- 
pied the year round, in flshing and preparing fish for 
all parts of Italy, with which they have a large com- 
merce. It would be useful, then, to know the pro- 
cedures by which they arrive at this last point. 
Accept, Sir, the assurance of my most 

distinguished consideration. Coste. 



LESSONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY AND HABITS 
OF THE SALMON. 

The following series of articles upon artificial 
and natural salmon breeding, appeared in BelVs Life 
in London, weekly newspaper, in January, February 
and March of the present year. They embody an 
account of what has been done in Great Britain, in 
relation to artifical breeding, and present some facts 
not found in the translations of the French works 
contained in this volume : 

LESSON I. 

HOW TO PRESERVE AND BREED IT ARTIFICIALLY. 

At last the salmon is attracting, practically, pubKc 
attention. Its present scarcity, compared with its 
past abundance, is the cause. If prevention had 
been practised — ohsta in principiis — stop the evil in 
the beginning — it would not now be necessary to ap- 
ply somewhat costly remedies. Happily real and 
effective measures are found, and all that is required 



112 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. • 

is their general application according to proper for- 
mulae. 

The breeding of salmon, by artificial means, is 
now considered the last resource to replenish salmon 
rivers, formerly abounding in salmo salo.r^ or true 
salmon — the genus salmo, the head of all the species 
and varieties of the salmon, known as salmonidce^ off- 
shoots of iYidfons et origo of the race, and embrac- 
ing every kind of trout from the salmo ferox to the 
smallest of rivulet trout, viz., the diminutive par. 
The artificial breeding of salmon has been taken up 
by the French Government, and placed under the 
surveillance of "/e Ministre deV Inter ieur, de Vagri- 
culture J et du commerce^" and under the joractical ap- 
plication of M. Coste, " Merahre de V Institute Prqfes- 
seur au College de France," and of MM. Berthot and 
Detzen, " ingmieurs du canal du Iih67ie au Rliin." 
The labours, and their results, of all these natural- 
ists, together with those of our own, Messrs. Shaw, 
Andrew Young, Boccius, Milne-Edwards, are detailed 
in a work, entitled, Inst7'uctions Pratiques sur la 
Fiscicidture, suivies de Mhnoires sur le meme sujet^ 
by the Monsieur Coste already mentioned. As yet 
no encouragement has been given to the breeding of 
salmon artificially by the English Government within 
the British isles. Earl Grey did, and the Duke of 
Newcastle does, favor and support an attempt to 
transfer salmon to the rivers of Van Dieman's Land, 
by artificial means, under the direction of Mr. Gott- 
lieb Boccius. One attempt has failed, Mr. Boccius 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 113 

says, through the retention, beyond the day fixed for 
sailing, by more than a month at Plymouth, I be- 
lieve, of the ship, on board of which impregnated 
salmon ova were placed in tanks prepared with due 
care. This is not to occur in a second attempt, 
about to be made shortly. I have not any thing like 
implicit faith in the success of transplanting salmon 
from the rivers of this country to those of the anti- 
podes, either by means of impregnated ova or living 
fish, young or adult. I repeat what I said once be- 
fore, that if the rivers of Van Diemen's Land are to 
be stocked with salmon, it will be from impregnated 
ova or living fish, procured from the river Sacra- 
mento, in California. The transit from that country 
is by one-half shorter than it is from any of the 
British ports. 

What the English Government has neglected to 
do, its subjects are now doing. An influential asso- 
ciation for breeding salmon artificially has been form- 
ed in Scotland, at the head of which are the Duke 
of Athol and the Earl of Mansfield. They have 
begun, we believe, for now is the time, their opera- 
tions in the Tay and its tributaries. The Messrs. 
Edmund and Thomas Ashworth, of Egerton Hall, 
Bolton, have purchased, in the Court for the sale of 
Encumbered Estates in Ireland, " A salmon fishery, 
extending from Lough Corrib to the sea," and have 
made experiments at Outerard, Co. Galway, in a re- 
port on which, signed W. H. Halliday, and dated 
Galway, 4th July, 1853, it is considered that there 



114 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

were ^' 40,000 ova (impregnated) deposited ; and, 
assuming that one third may not have come to ma- 
tury, we may condude that we have upwards of 
20,000 young salmon (salmon fry) now living in 
these ponds, heyond the reach of their natural ene- 
mies." We shall see next summer and autumn how 
many of these young salmon will return from the 
sea into the river or rivers into which they shall have 
been put, in the fry or smolt state — how many shall 
return grilse of the average weight of 5 lb. Then 
the success of the artificial breeding of salmon on 
Messrs. Ash worth's plan will be tested. In addition 
to the above experimentalists we have Mr. Isaac 
Fisher, banker, of Richmond, Yorkshire, associated 
with other gentlemen of that town and county, breed- 
ing salmon artificially in the river Swale. In a let- 
ter recently written to me by Mr. Fisher, I find the 
following paragraph : — '' To-morrow I am ofi:* to the 
Wear, where there is an obstruction to the ascent of 
salmon up our river, the Swale, and I hope we shall 
be able to carry our work so as to overcome this ob- 
stacle. We intend to prosecute our experiments on 
artificial breeding this winter with greater care, and 
more extensively than we have yet attempted. I am 
going over the acts of Parliament touching salmon 
fisheries now in force, and my friend, Mr. Thirwall, is 
also at work. I have named the object (the submit- 
ting to the sanction of the Legislature a salmon ex- 
tension act) we have in view to many gentlemen in 
this quarter. I have promises of support to a great 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 115 

extent. Both our members will assist in carrying 
any bill that we may bring forward, that is, of course, 
if it be one that shall be carefully drawn up, &c. ; 
and I reaDy think if all set to with a will, we shall 
be successful. In France, England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, efforts are now being made almost simulta- 
neously to propagate salmon by artificial breeding. 
The success, or otherwise, of these efforts in the 
British isles, will be known next season by the results 
of the Messrs. Ash worth's experiments in Ireland, 
and the season following by those of the Scottish as- 
sociation, supported by the Duke of Athol and the 
Earl of Mansfield, and also by that in Yorkshire, 
promoted by Mr. Isaac Fisher and coadjutors. 

The question of breeding salmon artificially is 
not new to this country. The first British artificial 
breeders of salmon are Mr. John Shaw, of Drum- 
lanrig, and Mr. Andrew Young, of Invershin, Suth- 
erlandshire. The French and other artificial breeders 
have followed in their wake, I cannot say whether 
advantageously or not. I have my doubts. The 
lapse of a year and a half will (si vixerim) set them 
at rest. Mr. Shaw began his ex]3eriments in artifi- 
cial breeding in January, 1836, and in 1840 pub- 
lished his Experim,e7iial Observations on the Develoj^- 
ment and Growth of Salmo7i Fry, from the Exclu- 
sion of the Ova to the Age of Tioo Years. Mr, 
Young began artificial breeding in 1841, chiefly to 
prove that young salmon became smolts in the 
twelfth month of their existence, then migrated, and 



116 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH., 

returned to their native rivers the same year as grilse 
or young sahiion, coming back to breed for the first 
time. Mr. Shaw, in his Experimental Observations, 
maintained that salmon fry did not attain the smolt 
state before a period of two years passed in fresh 
water, and did not migrate to sea earlier. He also 
maintained that parr and salmon fry were identical. 
Mr. Young maintained the contrary, and I believe 
that Mr. Shaw now acknowledges that he was in er- 
ror, and that Mr. Young was right. I have never 
met with a salmon fisher, learned in the natural his- 
tory of salmon, who did not agree with Mr. Young. 
The tardiness in the development of Mr. Shaw's ar- 
tificially-bred salmon fry arose, in my opinion, from 
his having taken the impregnated salmon ova from 
the river Nith, and placed them for incubation in 
ponds fed by mountain rills. The artificial spawning- 
beds of Mr. Young were made in the river Shin, and 
the impregnated ova taken out of it. In 1848, Mr. 
Young wrote in the John 0' Groat's Journal, pub- 
lished at Wick, a series of essays on the salmon, 
which I transferred the same year to the columns of 
BcU's Life. Mr. Young soon after collected them, 
and they appeared in book shape, under the title of 
The Natural History and Habits of the Salmon, dtc. 
In that pamphlet he sketched the mode of breeding 
salmon artificially. In 1850 I wrote the Book of the 
Salmon. It is divided into two parts, — the first, by 
myself, is divided into four chapters, and treats of 
^' theory, principles, and practice of fiy-fishing for 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 117 

salmon, with lists of salmon flies for every good 
river in the empire/' The second part contains two 
long chapters on " the natural history of the salmon, 
all its known habits described, and on the best way of 
artificially breeding it." The information embodied 
in these two chapters was obtained by me from 
Mr. Young orally, and from his published and private 
writings. I believe in the correctness of that infor- 
mation, and I believe it — illustrated as it is with col- 
ored plates after nature of the salmon — ah ovo to 
the smolt state inclusive — the most valuable as yet 
published on the history and habits of the salmon, 
and on the means of breeding it artificially. In a 
letter from Mr. Young to me, dated December 17, 
1849, and part published in the Book of Salmon, pp. 
158, 159, and 160, he writes, " I have been experi- 
menting on salmon for upwards of 30 years. Few, 
I believe, if any, have paid the attention to the ha- 
bits of salmon I have done. To enumerate all the 
experiments I have made would fill volumes. On 
this point I must abridge. In 1834, and for a num- 
ber of years following, we [I suppose Mr. Young and 
his assistants] marked spawned fish for the purpose of 
settling the question, denied by many, of the return 
of salmon to their native rivers. This we did satisfac- 
torily. We, in 1835, marked smolts to ascertain 
and set at rest the following point, denied by many, 
viz., that the smolts returned grilse the same year 
they first went from the rivers to the sea in the smolt 
state. The experiments proved this also ; and spe- 



118 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

cimens of the grilse that we marked when smolts, 
and which returned grilse from the sea to fresh water 
the year they were marked, may be now seen in tlie 
Museum of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh. We 
continued these markings many years, invariably 
with similar results, and at the same period, continu- 
ously during three years, we carefully watched the 
spawning operations, and spawning beds in all their 
stages, and were fully convinced at last the fry re- 
mained in the rivers one ivliole year^ and no longer^ 
after having been hatched. However, though I was 
fully convinced in the case, the public were not, and 
still hung to the old theory that they were fry and 
smolts the same year [the fry produced in 1854 from 
ova deposited this year, say now, will not become 
smolts until the spring of 1855], and that their mi- 
gration to the sea took place shortly after they were 
hatched. To make assurance doubly sure, we, in 
1841, erected a chain of four artificial breeding ponds 
by the river Shin [I have seen the remains of them. 
They were in the Shin, close by its left-hand bank, 
and about a quarter of a mile or more from its 
mouth], about fifty yards above Shin bridge, when 
we hatched the fry to the state you have seen them 
preserved here. [In Mr. Young's museum at Inver- 
shin.] We continued this process for some years, and 
always found the same result. The ponds were 
visited and examined by Dr. Travers Twiss, of the 
University of Oxford, through whom I presented, in 
June, 1834, a set of ova and fry up to the smolt 



THE NEW ART OF BKEEDING FISH. 119 

state/' Who can doubt after this that the silvery- 
coated smoltj in length and weight about the admea- 
surement of a very large sprat, is a young salmon 
about a year old, and that at that age it migrates for 
the first time to sea, and does not wait until it is two 
years old to assume the silvery and migratory coat, 
as Mr. Shaw maintained it did. By Mr. Young's 
discovery we have a very important fact proved, viz., 
that grilse, weighing from four to eight pounds, are 
young salmon of 15 or 18 months old, a little more or 
less ; that they breed towards the end of their second 
year, and that they are adult salmon in the middle, 
and not unfrequently in the early part of the third, 
year of their existence. 

Before I proceed to analyze M. Coste's Instruc- 
tions Pratiques sur la Pisciculture, &c., and A Trea- 
tise on the Propagation of Salmon and other Fish, 
by Edmund and Thomas Ashworth, the latter being 
little more than a translation of the best parts of the 
former work, I shall lay down briefly a few salient 
items of the salmon's natural history. In order to 
preserve that valuable fish, and to multiply it by 
artificial breeding, its history and habits, as far as 
they have been discovered, should be known. 

The salmon is a fresh-water fish. In fresh water 
it breeds, and remains in it during the whole of the 
first year of its life. As long as it lives it passes, on 
an average, two thirds of every year in fresh water. 

It never breeds in lochs, lakes, pools, or deep 
still water, but invariably in fords and shallows^ and 



120 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

always returns after its annual, sometimes bi-annual 
migrations to sea, to the rivers in which it was bred, 
provided it escape during its immigrating voyage 
through salt water, destruction by fish of prey, am- 
phibious animals, or by the devices of man. 

It does not return from the sea to fresh water for 
the proximate or immediate purpose of spawning. 
If it did, we should not have fresh-run fish in Janu- 
ary, February, and March. Few salmon breed be- 
fore October. The general breeding time is the lat- 
ter end of November and the beginning of December. 
Salmon emigrating from the sea in the first months 
of the year will occasional 1}^ make a second sea voy- 
age in the summer, and return in the autumn to 
their native rivers. When salmon are surfeited with 
sea-found food, and have become full-fed and fat, 
they grow tired of salt water and its feeding grounds, 
and make for the estuaries and rivers. If the salt 
or brackish waters of the former are not well tinged 
with fresh water, the salmon remains in them until 
there be a flood in the rivers. They know when this 
takes place by the increased quantity of fresh water 
rushing into the narrow firths. Fresh water being 
lighter than salt water, it flows above the latter, and 
up into it the salmon swim, gambolling and swim- 
ming rapidly for the swollen river, its state enabling 
them to surmount weirs, cruives, and other obstacles, 
which would obstruct their passage if the river was 
low. In dry summer weather very few salmon are 
found in the rivers. A flood comes, subsides in two, 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 121 

three, or four days, and then the rivers — I mean 
good ones — abound with fresh-run fish. 

A fresh-run fish is known by the brightness of 
its scales, by its corpulency, the whiteness and soft- 
ness of its fins, by the shallow forking of the tail, 
and by parasitical insects adhering to it. These in- 
sects, or vermin, disappear, it is stated, from the 
sides and belly of the salmon after it has been in 
fresh water forty-eight hours. Some persons argue 
that salmon return to fresh water to get rid of these 
sea parasites. Not so ; if they did, they would, as 
soon as the insects disappeared, emigrate again to 
sea. This they never do until they have been many 
weeks in fresh water. 

Salmon, after its first year, never grows in length 
or bulk in fresh water. After its first immigration 
from the sea as a grilse, it diminishes in muscle, 
fibre, and fat, every day it remains in fresh water. 
Its fins become black and strongly elastic, and its gill- 
covers and back assume the same color. It is then 
called a '^ black'' fish, in contradistinction to the 
bright, clean, fresh-run (just arrived from sea) fish. 
It does not, until within a very few weeks of sp)awn- 
ing, lose strength in fresh water. It is more active 
than the fresh-run fish, has greater propelling power 
by means of fins hardened by fresh water. Salt 
water so softens the fins of salmon as to render them 
feeble propellers. We do not know how far sea- 
wards salmon travel to feed. I should say not far 
beyond the mouths of estuaries or the shores of 



122 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

ocean. I do not think the sahnon a deep-sea fish. 
If a river runs into a sea or frith, having a northern 
and southern direction, salmon, when they emigrate 
to either, take towards the north in search of feeding 
grounds, and return southwards to their native riv- 
ers. When the salmon resort to a sea lying east 
and west — the English Channel, for instance — I do 
not know which direction they take — whether they 
go eastward or westward. Would any naturalist of 
Hampshire or Devonshire tell whether the salmon 
of the rivers of those counties, when repairing to 
their salt-water feeding-grounds, proceed in the 
direction of the Atlantic or of the German Ocean ? 

This lesson is now long enough. I have not 
mentioned some of the minor habits of the salmon. 
I shall do so hereafter, not forgetting some of its 
wonderful instincts, great and rapid powers of diges- 
tion, and consequent incredible voracity, and rapidity 
of increase. I hope that those who are engaged in 
breeding the salmon artificially, who have studied or 
are studying its history and habits, wiU assist me 
during the winter months in the objects I have in 
view — preserving and multiplying salmon so as to 
render it as abundant and cheap in our markets as 
the cod-fish. They can assist me by correcting any 
errors into which I may have fallen, or by giving 
additional information on points upon which I have 
not been sufficiently minute, or by dilating on points 
that have escaped my notice, or of which I am 
ignorant. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 123 



LESSON II. 

Sai-mon anglers, salmon lovers, salmon eaters, sing, 
" Oh, be joyful," and be so. More than " looming 
in the future" is a good time for you. I know not 
looming ; — that won't do for me. I want the posi- 
tive and palpable, and must and shall have it. I 
want salmon abundant and cheap, and in two years 
— no looming here — I, and you, and every body will 
have it. I mean us, poor people, for when the sal- 
mon is cheap, and is found as good and as plentiful 
near the Brill, Somers Town, as in Bond-street, 
Charing-cross, or Cheapside, your courtier will have 
none of it. Once become the food of the people, 
'twill stink in his nostrils, and, pah, he'll look upon 
it as "a slovenly corpse." Ai7isi soit-il — Amen ; 
per omnia secula seculorum. We have begun the 
new year well. Bead again and again " Salmo's," 
and " Y.'s," " Piscator's," and "Outis's" letters, in 
our impression of the 1st of January, 1854. In them 
behold the seed that will bring forth — in them see 
the forerunner of other sowers — in them contemplate 
the nucleus of a great and triumphant salmon-league 
— in them imagine the vendors and the makers of 
vendors of salmon selling it at Sd. per lb. It is 
pleasant to see three writers, one living in the Scot- 
tish Highlands, far, far away, another in Bucking- 
hamshire, and the third, the erudite, acute, and cor- 



124 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

rectly-calculating " Salmo," in Lancashire, totally 
unknown to each other, uttering identical opinions — 
at least upon one great point — touching the salmon 
question. It is pleasant to me to see such men re- 
sponding to my call for aid, and agreeing with me 
on most points. If we differ — if I dispute a point 
with them, it is in the most friendly manner, for the 
good of the cause so dear to us all, and for nothing 
in the whole world besides. Last Sunday " Salmo" 
wrote, " My experiments on salmon were discon- 
tinued last year, as I had not an opportunity of 
visiting the Hodder at the proper time ; they have, 
however, been resumed this winter under very favor- 
able auspices. In the mean time, I have continued 
my experiments with trout successfully, and I shall 
give you the result in some future paper. Before 
entering upon that question, however, I purpose say- 
ing a little more about the breeding and preservation 
of salmon." I beg of so able a writer not to forget 
his promise, and I also beg him to bear in mind the 
vast circulation of this paper amongst sportsmen 
and naturalists. It is read, I am certain, by half a 
million of persons, so that " Salmo " will have a very 
large auditory. The larger it is, the more good he 
will effect. Both " Salmo " and " Y." are of opinion 
that artificial breeding is necessary only in salmon- 
less rivers. In fact, they think it injurious in rivers 
in which there is a ftiir amount of salmon. The fol- 
lowing calculation by " Salmo " is curious. He says, 
" Assume that a full-grown salmon contains 10,000 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 125 

ova, which is considerably under the mark. The 
salmon choose for their spawning places, technically 
called ^ Kidds,' the rough beds of gravel which con- 
nect the foot of one pool with the head of the next. 
In the Hodder these gravel beds occur at intervals, 
varying from 100 to 300 yards. Assume that there 
are five such spawning places in one mile of water, 
then ten miles of river would contain fifty of them. 
Assume that 10 fish spawn Annually on each of 
these gravel beds, the result would be, that, in these 
ten miles of water, 500 salmon would produce 
5,000,000 of ova, which, if they arrived at the ma- 
turity of their parents, would extend in a continuous 
line, head to tail, upwards of 2,000 miles. Now 
these results are so startling, as to prove at once 
that it is not from the deficiency of young fry that 
we have to lament the decrease in the number of 
salmon. The mischief must be sought for elsewhere. 
If only one fish in a hundred of those which are bred 
in the river returned to it mature salmon, we should 
have to boast of 50,000 annually in the Hodder ; 
yet, for the purposes of this illustration, I have as- 
sumed only 500 pair of breeding fish." No doubt 
salmon fry are not sufficiently protected, and no 
doubt that if "one in a hundred" returned to its 
native river, we should have abundance of salmon. 
But I conceive this is no argument against artificial 
breeding. Will artificial breeding increase or not 
the number of salmon fry ? If it do, though the 
loss will be greater, the return of them as grilse will 



126 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

• 

also be greater. In well-preserved rivers, such as 
the Shin in Sutherlandshire, or the Erne in Ire- 
land, in which the fishings cease in the third week 
of August, artificial breeding may not be requisite, 
but in rivers badly cared for, or over-fished, I think 
it may be profitably brought into requisition. My 
excellent friend and old correspondent, '' Y." writes, 
" Although we allow that artificial breeding may be 
a good supplementary fund to natural breeding, the 
amount of that benefit is yet wholly to be seen. It 
is all on paper, and not yet in reahty. Artificial 
breeding is valuable for the stocking of barren rivers, 
and the discovery for that purpose is of the utmost 
importance. But the attempts now in progress to 
increase the numbers in almost fishless rivers that 
negligence and bad laws have produced, are only yet 
in embryo, and not too much dependence is to be 
placed on them — at all events, not that dependence 
that should induce us to underrate that beautiful 
production of fishes which nature has so distinctly 
granted them. We are aware that long previous to 
the time that Mr. Jacobi wrote an account of his 
artificial propagation of fishes in the Hanover Maga- 
zine, that salmon, in Britain and Ireland, flourished 
and increased to an incalculable degree, under just 
and natural laws, and by natural breeding, and I 
have no hesitation in saying that they would do so 
still. The proprietors on Tay for the last two years 
acted wisely towards that river, for they trampled 
the present base act under foot, and closed the fish- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 127 

ings on that river on the 26th of August, in place 
of the 14th of September, and by that means they 
have got the river better supplied with breeders than 
it has been during the existence of the present laws/' 
There is much caution in these remarks. It is evi- 
dent, however, that " Y." is not favorable to artifi- 
cial breeding except in " barren " rivers. He does 
not speak out so boldly as " Salmo," but I feel as- 
sured that on this point their opinions tally. " Y.'' 
speaks well of the condition of the river Tay. It is 
surprising, then, that some of its proprietors should 
have recourse to artificial breeding, or, if not surpri- 
sing, it must be taken as a proof that they hope 
some good at least from breeding artificially. And 
here, en 2^ccssa7it, 1 will hint that I do not much like 
the breeding-boxes of Mr. Ramsbottom used by him 
upon Tay and in Galway. Why not breed in the 
bed of the river withinside a longitudinal dam ? Of 
this I shall have to say a good deal hereafter. If I 
w^ere convinced of the accuracy of the following cal- 
culation set forth by " Salmo," I should be obsti- 
nately opposed to breeding salmon by artificial means. 
He says, " It must be remarked, that only a Hmited 
portion of the ova of a salmon is mature at a time ; 
that to obtain the gross produce of one fish, you 
must handle, at least, 10 or 12, probably 40 or 50 
fish ; that, in procuring these fish, you must disturb 
a considerable number of others, and interrupt their 
spawning at a very critical period ; that every fish 
so handled, is more or less injured, and rendered for 



128 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

the time quite sickly and helpless ; and that, do all 
you may, your utmost exertions will not enable you 
to collect so much as one per cent, of the ova de- 
posited in the river ; and that, after all, you have 
only robbed the river of so many ova which would 
otherwise have been deposited there without youv 
aid." Now, in my opinion, if the female salmon be 
properly manipulated the ripe ova will be expelled 
only, and if the fish be returned to the river, she will 
recover, her remaining ova will become mature, and 
she will deposit them, and get them impregnated as 
if nothing had happened. I believe this to be Mr. 
Andrew Young's opinion. At the best, however, it 
can only be opinion or surmise. It is very difficult 
to tell what becomes of a salmon returned to the ri- 
ver after some of its ova have been expressed for the 
purpose of producing salmon in boxes or ponds. A 
late number of the Perth Courier says, ^' On Satur- 
day last, from five female and one male salmon, 
caught below a ford near the mouth of the Almond, 
about 50,000 eggs were got." This statement does 
not agree with " Salmons" calculation. 

I have as yet said little of " Piscator's" letter. 
He clinches the matter at once by saying that the 
only remedy to prevent the decay of salmon is a 
change in the salmon-fishery laws — a change from 
bad to good. It is the best remedy, and, if all of us 
were like " Piscator," we soon should get it ; if aU 
were as ready as he is to form " An Association for 
the Protection of Salmon," the Legislature would ac- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 129 

cord the remedy required. ^' Salmo " mentions the 
large amount of fry and smolts to be seen in even 
tolerably good salmon rivers, and how few of them 
return as grilse. How can they ? It is not gene- 
rally made penal to kill salmon fry. I know of no 
trial for the offence, except one that took place last 
year before a meeting of magistrates at Worcester. 
Yet not far from that town they are captured whole- 
sale, and served up at the inns as a delicious i^lat. 
under the name of '' lastsprings." In the Mon- 
mouthshire Wye they are caught by bushels, and so 
they are in every Irish river with which I am ac- 
quainted. I have seen urchins on the Suir, county 
Waterford, and in the Lee, county Cork, catch them 
by scores with the artificial fly, which they take with 
extreme avidity. Hundreds of thousands of them 
are destroyed by eel-traps and at mill-dams, and 
there is at present no help for it. I believe that 
many persons are not aware that salmon fry is young 
salmon. They think them trout, and, whilst slay- 
ing them, are not aware of the mischief they are 
doing. The Eeverend author of the "Erne ; its 
Legends and its Fisheries,'' mentions in that inter- 
esting work that he used to see, near Ballyshannon, 
hundreds of boys " whipping " for salmon fry, and 
no one durst interfere with them for fear of parental 
vengeance. All this must be stopped. The coming 
season will be an abundant salmon one ; and the fol- 
lowing better. We are now beginning a real salmon 
agitation ; and 

6* 



130 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

"I think I hear a little bird that sings, 
The salmon will be masters by and by"; — 

Legitimately masters, pronounced so at the bar of 
the House of Lords by the binding words, " La Heine 
le vent." 

In my first lesson of the date of Dec. 8, I gave a 
few items of the natural history of salmon. I then 
promised that others should in due time follow. I 
now redeem my pledge. I know of no creature whose 
growth is so rapid as that of the salmon. The smolt 
weighing between two and three ounces, becomes in 
three months a grilse of six pounds, more or less. 
Mr. Young has seen a grilse that weighed fourteen 
pounds, and one that weighed little more than one 
pound. The largest and smallest, I fancy, he ever 
saw during his long experience of 40 years and more. 
The large grilse must have remained at sea an un- 
usual length of time, and have been descended from 
Patagonian parents ; the lesser one must have only 
remained on the salt-water feeding grounds three or 
four weeks. In The Book of the Salmon, pp. 199- 
200, I have written, " This growth of salmon at sea, 
and at sea only, after having obtained in fresh water 
the smolt size, depends on three things : duration of 
time they remain on their sea feeding-grounds, qua- 
lity and quantity of food they obtain thereon, and 
hereditary capacity for growth with apportion-capa- 
city for digestion. The grilse of small salmon, that 
is, of salmon which never grow beyond a small size, 
are handsomer, in every way better shaped, and ge- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 131 

nerally of a brighter silvery hue, than the grilse, the 
produce of larger growing salmon. The grilse of 
the rivers Carron and Laxford, in Rossshire and 
Sutherlandshire, are handsome, small-headed, thick 
and deep, and short in the body ; their scales are 
small, smooth and bright, and all this because they 
are the offspring of small, well-shapen parent sal- 
mon : whereas the grilse of the river Shin, in which 
salmon grow to a very large size, are ill-shaped fish, 
having large heads, long, thin bodies, large long fins, 
and large, rough, and by no means brilliant scales. 
It requires experience to distinguish a large and well 
shaped grilse from a small salmon. Very frequently 
the only distinguishing marks between grilse and 
salmon are the smaller scales of the former, the 
longer and larger fins, and the more forked tail." 
The powers of digestion of the salmon are amazing. 
I opine that a salmon would digest a herring in a 
few minutes, and I think that whilst at sea the quan- 
tity of fish-food it consumes is immense. Hence the 
chief cause of the wonderful rapidity of its growth. 
A salmon never grows so fast as in the second year 
of its existence. An adult salmon, weighing 101b, 
has been known to more than double its weight in 
37 days ! 

This ratio of increase cannot continue long, and 
I conclude that very large and aged salmou remain 
stationary as to growth. The male salmon at spawn- 
ing time, and in its kelt state, has a soft tooth-like 
excrescence in the lower jaw fitting into the upper. 



132 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

The use of this excrescence is not known. Salmon 
in surmounting weirs and waterfalls jump straight 
upwards — not perpendicularly, but rising gradually 
as a man taking a running leap over a hurdle, hedge, 
or gate. On the moot point of salmon leaping, I say, 
in a Handbook of Angling , "Natural historians used 
to gravely tell us that salmon, in order to jump high, 
were in the habit of placing their tails in their 
mouths, and then bending themselves like a bow, 
bound out of the water to a considerable distance, 
from twelve to twenty feet." The late Mr. Scrope 
{Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing) , correctly 
culates that six feet in height is more than the aver- 
age spring of salmon, though he conceives that very 
large fish, in deep water, could leap much (which I 
doubt) higher. He says, "Large fish can spring 
much higher than small ones ; but their powers are 
limited or augmented according to the depth of wa- 
ter they spring from : in shallow water they have 
little power of ascension ; in deep they have the 
most considerable. They rise very rapidly from the 
very bottom to the surface of the water by means of 
rowing and sculling, as it were, with their fins and 
tail ; and this powerful impetus bears them upwards 
in the air, on the same principle that a few tugs of 
the oar make a boat shoot onwards after one has 
ceased to row." The ascending motion is caused by 
the salmon striking the water downwards with its 
pectoral, ventral, and dorsal fins, aided by bodily 
muscular action. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 133 

Salmon invariably spawn on gravelly and sandy 
shallows. As soon as they have paired — the females 
seeking the males, as it is said maids do of leap-j^ears — 
they choose a fit spawning locality, from which, if they 
can, they chase aw^ay all other fish. For some days 
they are engaged in this operation. The coast being 
clear, and the female ready to lay her mature ova or 
eggs, they commence constructing what I call their 
nests. How these are situated and constructed I 
explain, on the viva voce authority of Mr. Andrew 
Young, in The book of the Salmon, p. 174 et infra : — 
^' The spawning-bed, which may be called a continu- 
ation of nests, is never fashioned transversely, or 
across the water-current, but straight against it. The 
way the bed is formed has never before been accu- 
rately described. Some have affirmed that the male 
fish is the sole architect ; others, that the female 
does all the w^ork ; others, again, that the tail is the 
only delving implement employed ; and others write 
that the bed trenches are dug across the stream. A 
salnaon spaw^ning-bed is constructed thus : — The fish 
having paired, chosen their spot for bed-making, and 
being ready to lie-in, they drop down stream a little, 
and then rushing back with velocity towards the spot 
selected, they dart their heads into the gravel, bur- 
rowing with their snouts into it. This burrowing 
action, assisted by the powers of the fins, is perform- 
ed with great force, and the water's current aiding, 
the upper part or roof of the excavation is removed. 
The burrowing process is continued until a first nest 



134 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

is dug sufficiently capacious for a first deposition of 
ova. Then the female enters this first hollowed link 
of the bed, and deposits therein a portion of her ova. 
That done, she retires down stream, and the male 
instantly takes her place, and, pouring, by emission, 
a certain quantity of milt over the deposited ova, 
impregnates them. After this the fish commence a 
second excavation, immediately above the first, and 
in a straight line with it. In making the excava- 
tions they relieve one another. When one fish grows 
tired of its work it drops down stream until it is re- 
freshed, and then, with renovated powers, resumes 
its labors, relieving at the same time its partner. 
The partner acts in the same spirit, and so their la- 
bor progresses by alternate exertion. The second 
bed completed, the female enters it as she did the 
first, again depositing a portion of ova, and drops a 
little down stream. The male forthwith enters the 
excavation, and impregnates the ova in it. The 
different nests are not made on the same day, but on 
different days, progressively. It is never so all at 
once. The ova in the first nest are covered with 
gravel and sand, dug from the second, being carried 
into it chiefly by the action of the current. The 
excavating process just described is day by day con- 
tinued, until the female has no more ova to deposit. 
The last deposition of ova is covered in by the action 
of the fish and water, breaking down some of the 
gravel crust above and over the nest. Thus is form- 
ed a complete spawning bed — not at once, not by a 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 135 

single effort, but piecemeal, and at Several intervals 
of greater or less duration, according to the age and 
size of the fish, and quantity of ova to be de2)osited. 
A female salmon in its third year has a larger quan- 
tity of ova to deposit than a female giilse, or young 
salmon in its second year ; and it may be taken for 
granted that the older and larger either fish, male or 
female, is, the greater the quantity of ova to be de- 
posited and of milt to be emitted. In consequence, 
the time occupied in deposition chiefly depends upon 
the size and fecundity of the female fish. The aver- 
age time is from five to ten days. It would be more 
correct to say the mean time lies betwixt.^' As soon 
as salmon have spawned they are kelts and foul fish, 
totally out of condition and unfit for human food. 
They drop down into the pool next below the spawn- 
ing bed, and there remain until they have somewhat 
recovered from the exhausting process of procreation. 
They then proceed slowly seawards, and by the time 
they approach the mouths of rivers they become 
^^ mended'' kelts. In this state they eagerly take 
the artificial fly and other baits, but though the an- 
gler, fishing for fresh-run fish, cannot help capturing 
them, none but the arrant poacher will keep them 
in captivity. The true sportsman will take them 
tenderly off his hook, replace them in the river, that 
they may go to sea, and there grow and fatten, and 
come back a clean, beautiful fish, in high condition. 
I have now touched on the salient and important 
points of the salmon's history and habits. There 



136 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

remain still some curious and amusing ones to be 
mentioned. We defer them to another day. My 
third lesson shall be on the methods of breeding sal- 
mon artificially — on M. Coste's, member of the 
French Institute and professor at the College of 
France ; on Mr. Young's, as given in the Book of 
the Salmon ; and on that of the ingenious and inde- 
fatigable Mr. Grottleib Boccius, should I see him 
within the next week or so. 

Jan. 4, 1854. Ephemera. 



LESSON III. 

As I am not so much opposed to the artificial breed- 
ing of salmon as several celebrated corespondents of 
this journal, I shall briefly sketch the different 
methods formerly and recently adopted in Europe 
for propagating salmon by what are called artificial 
means. The Messrs. Edmund and Thomas Ashworth, 
of Egerton Hall, Bolton, Lancashire, have purchased 
in the Court for the Sale of Encumbered Estates a 
" several fishery, extending from Lough Corrib to 
the sea," and have attempted in the spawning sea- 
son of 1852 to propagate salmon near Outerard ar- 
tificially. Last year, they published "A Treatise 
on the Propagation of Salmon and Other Fish." It 
is not original, being merely a translation of certain 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 137 

portions of M. Coste's French work on pisciculture, 
extracts from Jacobi, and Messrs. Young and Shaw, 
concluding with Mr. Halliday's report of the experi- 
ments made at Outerard. Nevertheless, though not 
original, it is a useful pamphlet. There is a plate, 
copied from M. Coste, containing diagrams of the 
utensils used in artificial spawning, with figures of 
salmon from a day to ten months old inclusive. 

The first discoverer in Europe of artificial sp..wn- 
ing was Jacobi, a German naturalist. In 1773, 
exactly ten years after Jacobi had developed his 
theory in the Journal of Hanover ^ it was translated 
into French by Duhamel du Monceau. In this coun- 
try Mr. Shaw of Drumlanrig began to breed salmon 
artificially in the year 1836, and Mr. Young of In- 
vershin, a few years later, viz., in 1841. The Scotch 
breeders succeeded in producing salmon artificially, 
but they differed widely as to the ratio of growth of 
salmon so produced. Mr. Shaw maintained that 
salmon-fry did not attain the smolt or migratory 
state until it was two years old. Mr. Young con- 
tended that it did at the completion of its first year. 
Subsequent observations and experiments have prov- 
ed Mr. Young right and Mr. Shaw wrong. Messrs. 
Shaw and Young are, therefore, the first artificial 
breeders of salmon in Great Britain. In France, in 
1851, the system was first publicly adopted by MM. 
Berthot and Detzem, at Huningen, near the Bhine. 
They were preceded by private experiments made 
by two fishermen of Bresse, MM. Gehin and Bemy. 



138 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

M. Coste, member of the Institute, and professor at 
the College of France, next took the subject up, 
and supported by the French Government, he has 
been, and is carrying on in France the artificial 
propagation of sahiion, trout, and other fresh- water 
fish on a very large scale. We do not know as yet 
fully the results. All we as yet know is, that the 
French breeders have produced large numbers of 
fry, but we do not know how many of them have 
arrived at maturity — how many have attained mar- 
ketable value. 

I shall pass over Jacobi's method of artificial 
spawning, and come to that carried into effect at 
the establishment of the Messrs. Ashworth, at Out- 
erard. It is founded on M. Coste's plan. Mr. Hal- 
liday reporting on the spawning establishment at 
Outerard, writes from Galway, July 4, 1853 — '^ Ro- 
bert Ramsbottom, from Clitheroe, was sent over by 
Messrs. Ashworth. The plan tried was by spawn 
boxes, prepared, and by an artificial rill-bed, run- 
ning parallel, and both were equally successful. On 
the 14th December, 1852, a small rill at Outerard 
was selected for the experiment ; by a rude check 
thrown across, a foot of water head was raised over 
a few square yards, to insure regularity in the sup- 
ply. From this head, half-foot mider surface level, 
three wooden pipes, two inches square, by a few feet 
long, drew off respectively to the rill-bed and to the 
boxes all the water required — the surplus of the 
supplying rill passing away in its usual course. The 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 139 

boxes are six feet long, eighteen inches wide, nine 
inches deep, open at top, set iu the ground in a 
double row, on a slope of two or three inches on 
each box, the end of the one set close to the end of 
the other, in continuous line, and earthed up to 
within an inch of the top. They are partly filled— 
first, with a layer of fine gravel, next coarser, and 
lastly, with stones, coarser somewhat than road 
metal, to a total depth of six inches. A piece of 
twelve inches wide by two inches deep is cut from 
the end of each box, and a water-way of tin nailed 
over this, with a turn-up on either side, to prevent 
the water from escaping. These connect the line 
of boxes, and carry the water to the extreme end, 
whence it is made to drop into the one which re- 
ceives and preserves the young fish. The artificial 
rill is, in all respects, similarly prepared, excepting 
that its channel course is in the rill itself The 
pipe is now introduced into the upper box of each 
line, and at the water head the spawn bed is pre- 
pared, two hours' running will clear away the earth 
from the stones. The water will be found about 
two inches in depth, over the average level of the 
stones in the boxes. By an iron wire grating, the 
boxes can be isolated, and the pipe protected against 
the passage of insects and trout. The salmon were 
taken by nets on the spawn fords at night, from the 
20th of December, 1852, till after the 1st of Janu- 
ary. When taken, they were instantly, and with- 
out injury, put into a tub, one-fourth full of water. 



140 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

The female fish was turned over, one man holding 
the tail, another running his hands down each side 
from the head, and, pressing lightly with his 
thumbs, the ova were readily discharged into the 
tub ; a simdar course readily discharged the milt. 
Both fish immediately, and apparently without the 
smallest injury, were returned to the river. The 
contents of the tub were then mixed by a, motion 
of the hand. In one minute the water was poured 
off, and fresh put on, which was also 2:)oured off, and 
the ova put into the vessel, to carry to the prepared 
hatching ground. In pouring off the water from 
the ova, always retain sufficient to preserve it from 
the air, both in the carrying vessels and spawning 
tubs ; unless the fish be in a fit state the ova will 
not shed by gentle pressure, in which case no vio- 
lence should be used, but the salmon returned to 
the river, and fish in a more advanced stage taken. 
In distribution, the ova intended for one box should 
be put into one vessel, and this poured out gradu- 
ally at the upper end of the box ; the waterflow 
downwards will carry it [them, the ova] among the 
stones, under which it [they] will settle down, and 
wherever too thick, by raising some water in the 
vessel, and pouring it down, this will disturb and 
float the spawn into a more equal distribution, that 
should, if possible, be done the same night as taken. 
We consider the boxes used of sufficient size for 
3,000 ova each ; and, as a guide to the quantity 
found, an English half-pint will contain about 1,200 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 141 

in number. We consider there were 40,000 depo- 
sited, and, assuming that one third may not come 
to maturity, we may conclude that we have up- 
wards of 20,000 young salmon living in those ponds, 
beyond the reach of their natural enemies. From 
the lateness of the season, although the numbers of 
spawn fish lifted were very considerable, the above 
quantity of ova might be readily obtained out of 
five pairs of full, good brood fish, and that a million 
of ova [more correct to say 800,000] might, by a 
similar process, be deposited from one hundred pairs 
of salmon. A very curious fact was also ascertained 
in the course of this experiment. In taking up the 
spawning salmon we also caught a quantity of 
trout ; those we examined, and, in every instance 
save one, they contained salmon ova, on which they 
were preying. From the gullet of one large trout 
we estimated that 600 were by pressure ejected, 
and I retained them along with a further quantity 
from other trout, and deposited all in boxes, isolated 
from the others, a considerable portion of which 
came to life, and are with the other fry in the 
ponds at Outerard, where thousands of young sal- 
mon may now be seen. And this experiment again 
shows that the year of their deposit as ova is not 
that of their migration to the ocean ; until that 
period, it is of great importance to retain the young 
fry in these ponds, where they are protected from 
their numerous natural enemies ; hereafter they 
must necessarily be left to protect themselves, and 



142 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

• 

are more capable of doing so ; up to that time they 
should be occasionally fed with suitable food, and 
all the fish in one pond should be of similar age, the 
larger fish proving very injurious to the smaller and 
weaker ones." 

The spawn deposited in the Outerard boxes in 
the middle of December, 1852, would be hatched 
about the middle of April, 1853, and, therefore, 
will be twelve months old next April, and those de- 
posited 1st January, 1853, will be about twelve 
months of age in May next. According to Mr. 
Young's theory, and mine, they will then be silvery- 
coated smolts, and will about the time migrate to 
sea. Will Mr. Halliday mark a few score of them 
when they assume their migratory coat, and so 
ascertain how many will return from the sea as 
grilse, and what will then be their average size ? 
If I understand right, all the salmon fry will be 
kept in the ponds until their period of migration. 
I regret this, for if a portion of them were freed 
from the ponds, and let into the river at two or 
three months old, and marked, an important ques- 
tion would be decided, viz., whether it were better 
to confine young salmon in ponds until the smolt 
state, or turn them when very young fry into the 
river from which the ova were taken. If a greater 
number of pond-imprisoned smolts, than liberated 
fry — the number imprisoned and liberated being 
equal — returned from sea to the parental river as 
grilse, then pond confinement would be proved 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 143 

more beneficial than early liberation. At present I 
do not think so. Non-migratory fish, the common 
troutj for instance, may be beneficially kept and fed 
in artificial ponds or streams for a year. I am not 
at all sure of the good expected to be the result of 
so confining migratory fish. I suspect they may 
never return to the rivers into which they shall be 
turned from the rearing ponds. If Mr. Halliday 
will adopt my suggestion of marking his smolts, he 
will dissipate my doubts and those of many others 
interested in every thing that pertains to the natu- 
ral history of the salmon, in its increased propaga- 
tion and preservation. 

This lesson would have contained other modes 
of breeding salmon artificially had not a flood of 
sporting neivs set in, overflowing our wide margins, 
and leaving little room for sporting essays. I shall, 
as soon as the flood subsides, resume, and, I hope, 
conclude, the questions of salmon breeding, rearing, 
and preserving 

Ephemera. 

Jan. 20. 



LESSON IV. 

I HAVE received such powerful aid from those clever, 
conscientious, and practical correspondents, " Salmo " 
and " Y." that nearly all the task I proposed to do 
myself has been executed by them. I could not 



144 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

have done so well as they have. To their communi- 
cations, which appear in company with this, I direct 
the careful attention of naturalists, and of all who 
own salmon rivers, and are desirous of having pro- 
ductive salmon fisheries. Printed proofs of them, 
and of my lessons, shall in a few days be forwarded 
for the consideration of H. K. H. Prince Albert, who 
has always exhibited beneficent anxiety and readi- 
ness to add to the comforts of the English people, 
to the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Palmerston, Mr. 
Sydney Herbert, and Sir W. Molesworth, all of 
whom are desirous to promote the culture of salmon 
waters, and to restore them to their former state of 
fertiUty. 

This lesson shall be confined to two modes of 
breeding salmon artificially. The first is copied, not 
in extenso, from Experimental Ohsey^vations on the 
Development and Growth of Salmon-Fry, &c. By 
John Shaw, of Drumlanrig. — (Edinburgh : Adam 
and C. Black. 1840.) — Mr. Shaw, as far as my 
knowledge extends, the first British breeder of sal- 
mon artificially, writes thus : — " On the 10th of 
January, 1836, I observed a female salmon of con- 
siderable size (about 161b.), and two males (of at 
least 251b.), engaged in depositing their spawn. 
The spot, which they had selected for that purpose, 
was a little apart from some other salmon which 
were engaged in the same process, and rather nearer 
the side, although still in pretty deep water. The 
two males kept up an incessant conflict during the 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 145 

whole of the day, for possession of the female, and 
were repeatedly on the surface displaying their dor- 
sal fins, and lashing the water with their tails. Be- 
ing satisfied that these were real salmon, there being 
at least ten brace of that fish engaged in the same 
process in the stream at the time, I took the oppor- 
tunity of securing as much of the ova as I could 
possibly obtain. This 1 did three days after it was 
deposited, the males and female still occasionally 
frequenting the bed. The method by which I ob- 
tained the eggs was by using a canvas bag, stitched 
on a slight frame formed of small rod-iron, in fashion 
of a large, square landing-net, one person holding 
this bag a few inches fiirther down the stream than 
where the ova was deposited, and another with a 
spade digging up the gravel, the current carrying 
the eggs into the bag, while the greater portion of 
the gravel was left behind. Having thus obtained 
a sufficient quantity of the ova for my purpose, I 
placed them in gravel under a stream of water where 
I could have a convenient opportunity of watching 
their progress. The stream was pure spring water. 
On the 26th February, that is, forty-eight days 
after being deposited, I found, on close inspection, 
that they had some appearance of animation, from a 
very minute streak of blood which appeared to tra- 
verse, for a short distance, the interior of the egg, 
originating near two small dark spots not larger, at 
that time, than the point of a pin. These two dark 
spots, however, ultimately turned out to be the eyes 



146 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

• 

of the embiyo fish, which was distinctly seen resting 
against the interior surface of the eg(^ a few days 
previous to its exclusion. On the 8 th of April, 
which makes ninety days imbedded in the gravel, I 
found, on examination, that they were excluded 
from the egg, which was not the case a day or two 
previous. The temperature of tho water at the 
time was 43 degrees, the temperature of the water 
in the river 45, and the temperature of the atmos- 
phere 39 degrees. On its first exclusion, the little 
fish has a very singular appearance. The head is 
large in proportion to the body, which is exceedingly 
small, and measures about ^five-eighths of an inch in 
length, of a pale blue or peach-blossom color. But 
the most singular part of the fish is the conical bag- 
like appendage which adheres by its base to the 
abdomen. This bag is about two-eighths of an inch 
in length, of a beautiful transparent red, very much 
resembling a light red currant, and, in consequence 
of its color, may be^seen at the bottom of the water 
when the fish itself can with difficulty be perceived. 
The body, also, presents another singular appear- 
ance, namely, a fin or fringe, resembling that of the 
tail of the tadpole, which runs from the dorsal and 
anal fins to the termination of the tail, and is 
slightly indented. This little fish does not leave 
the gravel immediately after its exclusion from the 
egg, but remains for several weeks beneath it with 
the bag attached, and containing a supply of nour- 
ishment, on the same principle, no doubt, as the 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 147 

umbilical vessel is known to nourish other embryo 
animals. By the end of fifty days, or the 30th of 
May, the bag contracted and disappeared. The fin 
or tadpole-like fringe also disappeared by dividing 
itself into the dorsal, adipose, and anal fins^ all of 
which then became perfectly developed. The little 
transverse bars, which for a period of two years (as I 
have already shown) characterize it as the parr, also 
made their appearance. Thus, from the 10th of 
January till the end of May, a period of upwards of 
140 days, was required to perfect this little fish, 
which even then measured httle more than one inch 
in length, and corresponded in all respects with 
those on which I had formerly experimented, as well 
as with such as existed at that same time in great 
numbers in the natural streams.'' 

Mr. Shaw afterwards made additional experi- 
ments in ponds artificially constructed, of which the 
following is a description : — 

" The ponds, which are three in number, are 
two feet deep, and thickly embedded with gravel, 
while they are at the same time supplied with a 
small stream of spring water in which the larvse of 
insects abound. Pond No. 1 is 25 feet in length by 
18 in breadth, and is fed by the stream which de- 
bouches into it at the fall F. Pond No. 2 is 22 
feet in length by 18 in breadth, and is fed from 
pond No. 1, at G, where the communication is care- 
fully grated with wire. Pond No. 3 is 50 feet in 
length by 30 in breadth, and is fed by the stream 



148 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

at F, having no communication with either of the 
other ponds. The waste water from pond No. 1 is 
conducted into pond No. 2 through a square wooden 
pipe, covered at the mouth with a wire grating, the 
bars of which are about one-eighth of an inch apart. 
The waste water from pond No. 2 is conveyed under 
ground, to the distance of 20 feet, in a square wood- 
en pipe, grated in the same manner as the former. 
The waste water from pond No. 3 passes down a 
square wooden pipe, two feet deep, covered at the 
top with wire-gauze, and is conveyed underground 
in a small covered drain to the distance of 20 feet 
from the pond. The water of the whole is then left 
to find its way to the river. To prevent any com- 
munication arising from an accidental overflow of 
the ponds themselves, I raised embankments upon 
the intersecting walks of two feet in height, so that 
the several families of fish which the ponds contain 
can have no access, direct or indirect, to each other. 
Where tlie rivulet is divided for the purpose of sup- 
plying the several ponds, I have formed an artificial 
fall in each stream, of a construction to prevent the 
fish from ascending one stream and descending an- 
other. Finally, where the water discharges itself 
from the ponds, the channels are so secured by wire- 
grating that it is as impossible for the young fish 
to escape as for any other fish to have access to 
them. The whole occupies an area of nearly 80 
feet square. My experimental basins being thus 
prepared, my next object was to secure the fish, the 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 149 

progeny of which were to form the subject of experi- 
ment. With the view, therefore, of securing two 
salmon, male and female, while in the very act of 
continuing their kind, I provided myself with an 
iron hoop five feet in diameter, on which I fixed a 
net of a pretty large mesh, so constructed as to form 
a bag of nine feet in length by five feet in width. I 
then attached the hoop and net to the end of a pole 
nine feet lono^, thus formino; a landins: net on a 
large scale. The weight of the net with its iron 
hoop being upwards of 71bs. it instantly sunk to the 
bottom on being thrown into the water. Being thus 
prepared with all the means of carrying my experi- 
ment into practice, I proceeded to the river Nith on 
the 4th January, 1837, and readily discovered -a 
pair of adult salmon engaged in depositing their 
spawn. They were in a situation easily accessible, 
the water being of such a depth as to admit of any 
net being employed with certain success. Before 
proceeding to take the fish, I formed a small trench 
in the shingle by the edge of the stream, through 
which I directed a small stream of water from the 
river, two inches deep. At the end of this trench I 
placed an earthenware basin of considerable size, for 
the purpose of ultimately receiving the ova. I then, 
at one and the same instant, enclosed both the fish 
in the hoop, allowing them to find their way into 
the bag of the net by the aid of the stream. In 
capturing these fish, I considered myself fortunate 
in securing them by one cast of the net, for, in con- 



150 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

ducting the experiment of artificial impregnation, it 
appeared to me to be very desirable that the male 
should be taken with the female of his own selection 
at the very moment when they were mutually en- 
gaged in the continuance of their species. To take 
a female from one part of the stream and a male 
from another might not have given the same chance 
of a successful issue to the experiment. Having 
drawn the fish ashore, I placed the female, while still 
alive, in the trench, and pressed from her body a 
quantity of ova. I then placed the male in the 
same situation, pressing from his body a quantity of 
milt, which, passing down the stream, thoroughly 
impregnated the ova. I then transferred the spawn 
to the basin, and deposited it in a stream connected 
with a pond previously formed for its reception, 
which, however, I have not considered it necessary 
to represent in the accompanying plan. The tem- 
perature of this stream was 39 degrees ; of the river 
from which the salmon were taken, 33 degrees ; and 
of the atmosphere 36 degrees. The skins of the 
parent salmon are now in my possession. On ex- 
amining the ova on the 23d of February (50 days 
after impregnation), I found the embryo fish dis- 
tinctly visible to the naked eye, and even exhibiting 
some symptoms of vitality by moving feebly in the 
egg. The temperature of the stream was at this 
time 36 degrees, and of the atmosphere 38 degrees. 
On the 28th of April (114 days after impregnation), 
I found the young salmon excluded from the egg, 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 151 

which was not the case when I visited them on the 
previous day. The temperature of the stream was 
then 44 degrees. The ova, which for some time 
previous to being hatched, had been almost daily in 
my hand for inspection, did not appear to suffer at 
all from being handled. When I had occasion to 
inspect the ovum, I placed it in the hollow of my 
hand, covered with a few drops of water, where it 
frequently remained a considerable time without 
suffering any apparent injury. The embryo, how- 
ever, while in this situation, showed an increased 
degree of activity by repeatedly turning itself in the 
egg, an action probably produced by the increase of 
temperature arising from the warmth of the hand." 

Mr. Shaw did not breed artificially for the im- 
mediate purpose of stocking the river Nith, but to 
ascertain the growth of salmon-fry ah ovo. Having 
proved that salmon could be bred artificially, he was 
satisfied with two alleged main results, viz., that 
salmon-fry, with transverse bar marks, are identical 
with the "parr," and that they do not attain the 
smolt, or migratory state, until the age of two years. 
These results have been disputed by subsequent ex- 
perimentalists, more particularly by Mr. Young, of 
Invershin, who maintains that "parr" are adult 
trout of the smallest variety, and that young salmon 
(smolts) migrate at the first year, or nearly so, of 
their age. I am inclined to think that the tem- 
perature of the water may hasten or retard the 
period of migration, but not for so long a period as 



152 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

one year. Mr. Sliaw says, " that one or two of*each 
of his three broods assumed the migratory or smolt 
dress at the age of twelve months.'" And that he 
ascribes to the high temperature of water. Mr. 
Shaw gives an engraving of a two-year old smolt, 
bred in one of his ponds. It measures 6J inches in 
length. I have never seen a naturally river bred 
smolt longer than five inches, and never one, by any 
means, so bulky as Mr. Shaw's two-year old smolt. 

The last chapter in my Book of the Salmon is on 
" The Breeding of Salmon Artificially.'' It de- 
scribes the method carried out by Mr. Young in the 
bed of the river Shin, successfully, during three con- 
secutive years : — " The first thing to be taken care 
of in this way of breeding salmon is that the spawn- 
ing beds, which are to be artificially formed, be sup- 
plied, if possible, with water from which the ova are 
taken. In making experiments on the growth of 
salmon-fry this precaution is more absolutely neces- 
sary than when one is breeding for the sole sake of 
stocking a river. In all cases it will be advisable, 
that the spawning and rearing ponds be not fed 
with water of a temperature widely differing from 
that from which the spawn has been procured. 
With these few general remarks, I will transcribe 
the notes I have received from Mr. A. Young on 
this interesting and important subject. To give the 
seed, he says, the same advantages as that naturally 
spawned in rivers, the artificial breeding-ponds 
should be erected in the immediate vicinity of, or in 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 153 

the river, and the ponds should be fed by a small 
stream, or ^ lead ' taken from the river, so that the 
temperature and all the conditions of the one may, 
in eveiy respect, agree with those of the other. At 
the spot you take the ^lead' off the river, you com- 
mence the erection of a wall to shut out the main 
current. The wall may be built in the river by the 
side of one of its banks, and its height then is to be 
greater than the highest flood-marks of the river. 
In the bottom of the wall, where it takes the ^lead' 
off the river, an opening or drain-mouth is to be 
constructed of the width of the current you wish to 
flow through your ponds inside the defending wall. 
This opening at the upper end of the wall is to be 
so framed, that whether the state of the river is low 
or high, the supply of water to the pond will be nei- 
ther injuriously diminished nor increased. The 
drain-mouth, or opening in the wall, is to be secured 
by a strong iron grating, the bars of which are to be 
half an inch apart. This grating will prevent the 
accumulation in the ponds of any thing hurtful to 
them. The bed of the ponds must be dug up to 
the depth of about five feet, and they must be nine 
feet in width, and eighteen in length. Their bot- 
tom must be lower by five feet than that of their 
feeder. The bottom, however, must not be quite 
fiat, but graduated, rising from the end furthest 
from the head of the current towards the opening 
or drain-mouth. The necessary inclination can be 
given to the bottom of the pond by beginning with 



154 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

a layer of gravel one foot thick at the furthest ©nd, 
and finishing off towards the mouth with a layer of 
gravel eighteen inches in depth. The bottom of 
the pond will thus become an inclined plane. The 
ova are to be deposited at the top of the gradient, 
where you have finished off with a layer of eighteen 
inches of gravel, in order that they may have the 
benefit of sharply running water. The lower part 
of the inclined plane, or the deepest part of the 
pond, suits best the fry after incubation. The walls 
that are to secure the ponds must be strongly built 
of rough stone. No lime must be used in the con- 
struction of the walls, or of any thing connected 
with the ponds. Every one ought to know the de- 
structive effects of lime upon fish. To secure the 
ponds from the entrance of the smallest fish, besides 
the iron grating already mentioned, there must be 
another fixed inside it of copper wire closely inter- 
laced, so closely as to prevent the possibility of the 
smallest trout passing through the interstices. If a 
diminutive trout should enter it would devour the 
fry as soon as they were hatched. Each end of the 
pond should be secured in the same way. At the 
end where the pond water runs out there should be, 
if possible, a fall into the river, which would effectu- 
ally prevent the ascension to the ponds of any pre- 
datory fish. Some persons have tried artificial breed- 
ing in ponds supplied with water from springs and 
hill-burns, but in such trials no sensible person 
ought to expect satisfactory results, or, at any rate, 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 155 

results similar to those that would be derived by the 
use of ponds constructed in salmon rivers, or fed by- 
water directly emanating from them. Both the de- 
velopment of the fish in ovo and ab ovo depends 
upon the temperature of the water, and we know 
that a single frosty night will reduce by many de- 
grees the temperature of rills and rivulets ; whereas 
the currents of large rivers are little affected by it. 
Fry hatched in ponds fed by these hill-streams must 
be stinted in growth — kept in a status quo during 
many \^eeks— and they can never arrive at the smolt 
state in the same period of time as fry produced and 
bred in the waters of rivers. These latter fry are in 
their natural element— natural in its temperature 
and in the food, insects, and so forth, it produces. 
On the contrary, fry bred in ponds fed by springs or 
hill-burns, are, as it were, subjected to a different 
climate, strange and unnatural to them, barren, or 
nearly so, of insects, and foreign to their innate 
tastes. Their progress in- growth, therefore, cannot 
equal that of fry bred in favorable localities. When 
the ponds are perfectly formed and constructed, 
they should be filled with water, and it should be 
allowed to run freely into and out of them for a few 
days previously to depositing the spawn in them. 
This is necessary, in order that the newlj^-laid gravel 
may be washed well, the beds properly seasoned, 
and all mud or alluvial matter got rid of. The 
artificial spawning-beds must be reduced as nearly as 
can be to the condition of the naturally formed ones 



156 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

of rivers. The next step to bo taken is towards 
procuring proper spawn for deposition in the ponds. 
To do so we must watch carefully some natural 
spawning-ponds of the river at the time when the 
operations of spawning are going on, and we must 
capture a pair of salmon that have actually com- 
menced the spawning process. If we do not, we 
cannot be sure of procuring spawn in a ripe state. 
We must avoid capturing at random any pair of 
fish we may see on the spawning-bed, because many 
consorted males and females are seen hovering about 
the spawning-grounds several days before they begin 
depositing their spawn. If from such fish ova are 
expressed by manipulation, they will be found in an 
immature state, their pores not as yet open for the 
reception or absorption of the milt, and expressing 
it over them will not produce impregnation. On 
the contrary, when a pair, of course male and female, 
that have commenced spawning, are captured, their 
ova and milt will be found in the mature state re- 
quired, or, at least, a portion of them. A vessel, 
can, pail, or small tub must be ready, containing a 
small portion of clean gravel from the river, and as 
much river water as will cover the gravel, and the 
seed about to be deposited in it. The female sal- 
mon just captured must be held up by the head over 
the vessel, with one hand, whilst, with the other 
hand, gentle pressure is made down the belly of the 
fish. This pressure will cause the expulsion of all 
the ova that are mature, which will be received in 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 157 

the vessel. The male fish is then to be held and 
pressed in the same way, which will cause the emis- 
sion of mature milt into the vessel. The fish are 
to be returned to their native element, where, if the 
manipulator be not a rough one, they will speedily 
recover, and, when the remaining spawn, not arti- 
ficially forced from them, becomes mature, they will 
deposit it as if nothing had happened. Having ex- 
pressed ova and milt into the vessel, it must be 
shaken so that gravel, water, milt, and ova be pro- 
perly mixed, and that no ova escape from coming 
into contact with portions of milt. If any do, they 
will not be impregnated. On the contrary, the ova 
that are touched by the milt are impregnated, and, 
if properly cared for, will, in due time, produce 
young salmon. I solicit the attention of the owners 
of rivers to the following great fact : — Salmon-spawn 
artificially expressed from parent fish, and treated 
in the manner just now directed, may be conveyed 
without injury very long distances — from rivers in 

one country to rivers in another To return 

to our artificial pond, now ready for the reception of 
the impregnated spawn. It must be imbedded at 
the head of the pond — at the commencement of the 
inclination of its bottom, in a small trench about 
five inches in depth, formed longitudinally with the 
current, and not across it. The spawn must not be 
laid all of a heap in the trench, but carefully mixed 
with gravel all over its bottom, and then covered in 
with the gravel that has been excavated in forming 
the breeding furrow. The trench and its covering 



158 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

must be on the slightly inclined plane principle. 
The gravel with which the trench is covered in must 
not be pressed down, except very slightly, in order 
not to prevent the free percolation of the water, 
which must have full ingress and egress to and from 
the spot where the seed lies deposited. The action 
and contact of moving water are essentially neces- 
sary to perfect this strange incubating process. 
Without them ova will be non-productive, for, placed 
in gravel at the bottom of still, or sluggishly run- 
ning water, they will putrify, or, to use a generally 
known expression, they will be ' addled/ " 

It will be seen that Mr. Young's method re- 
quires no complicated machinery, no spawning uten- 
sils or salmon-breeding boxes. He made his beds in 
the soil of an old mill-race in the river Shin, and 
took his spawn from that river. Of course the tem- 
perature of the waters of the spawning-beds and of 
the river was the same. His artificially bred salmon 
fry assumed the silvery, migratory, smolt coat at 
the end of twelve months. This proves only that 
the Shin salmon fty become smolts at a year old, 
but it does not prove that to be the case in all 
rivers. I think it is so in the great majority of sal- 
mon rivers. I should very much like to see impreg- 
nated salmon ova from the Shin placed in the river 
Nith, and vice versa. If done, it would go far to- 
wards enabling us to come to a conclusion as to the 
age of smolts. 

Ephemera. 

Jan. 27. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 159 



LESSON y. 

On the 8th. December hist I commenced these les- 
sons ; I now conclude them. They have given rise 
to most important communications to this journal, 
on the subject of breeding salmon artificially, from a 
Lancashire gentleman, who signs himself " Salmo," 
and from a Scotch gentleman who has for years 
written on all that relates to salmon, under the sig- 
nature of " Y." They have led to other writings on 
the subject in the provincial papers, by far the most 
important of which are those contributed to the 
Kelso Mail, now printed in a pamphlet form, by 
Mr. Thomas Todd Stoddart, the author of that ex- 
cellent book. The Angler's Companion to the liivei^s 
and Lochs of Scotland. At the end of this lesson I 
shall make extracts from Mr. Stoddart's pamphlet. 
In the course of my lessons I have shown that sal- 
mon breed in the shallows of rivers, in nests they 
form in the gravel — that the female deposits her ova 
in them, and that immediately afterwards the male 
impregnates the ova by shedding his milt upon 
them — that the ova are hatched on an average in 
120 days — that the foetus so produced does not 
assume the perfect fish form until one month old — 
that it is then a salmon fry, and so continues to its 
twelfth month, when it becomes a smolt, with silvery 
coat, its length five inches or so, and its weight two 



160 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

or three ounces — that it then migrates to salt water, 
feeds therein, and in the course of three or four 
months becomes a grilse or maiden salmon, v\reigh- 
ing not unfrequently 81b. (rapidity of growth most 
marvellous and almost incredible !) — that in this 
grilse state it returns to its native river, spawns in 
due season upon its fords, and not long afterwards 
migrates for the second time to sea — that having 
fed there for two or three months, it becomes an 
adult salmon, weighing 12, 14, or 161bs. — that it 
again returns to its native river, deposits in the 
spawning beds some 10,000 or 15,000 ova, which 
are impregnated by the male, and give life, in all 
probability, to 7,000 or 8,000 salmon — that salmon 
will migrate and immigrate every year, until they 
are captured, increasing in size, not in the same ra- 
tio as in their first years, annually, and breedin'g 
annually. I have shown how salmon are to be bred 
artificially, and I have noted many of their minor 
and curious habits for the satisfaction of the young 
naturaUst and angler. Nothing remained for me to 
do but to show how salmon might be best preserved. 
I was just about to do so, when I received the com- 
munication, printed underneath this, from " Salmo" 
on the very same subject. He has forestalled my 
suggestions, and so ably shown how salmon are to 
be increased and jDreserved, that I deem it for the 
present totally unnecessary to write a single word 
more upon the subject. I am not, however, going 
to close my lessons abruptly. I have something 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 161 

very singular to communicate to my readers — some- 
thing that will induce them to fancy that the habits 
of sahiion are not the same in all rivers and coun- 
tries. I have occasionally fancied so myself, and 
supposition is now almost converted into belief 
By what means ? I will show you, reader, in a few 
minutes. 

There have appeared lately two large imperial 
octavo volumes, beautifully printed, and most pro- 
fusely, ornamentally, and usefully illustrated, pub- 
lished by Mr. Bentley, New Burlington-street, pub- 
lisher in ordinary to her Majesty. The title of this 
superb, interesting, and instructive work is, Scandi- 
navian Adventures during a Residence of Twenty 
Years, by L. Lloyd, author of Field Sports of the 
North. The title-page furthers tells, and truly 
tells, that the volumes " represent sporting inci- 
dents, and subjects of natural history, and devices 
for entrapping wild animals ; with some account of 
the northern fauna.'' A large portion of the first 
volume is occupied with the history, habits, and 
modes of capture of the fish of Scandinavia. For 
the present I shall confine myself to a portion of 
what the author writes about salmon. Chapter VI. 
is devoted to that fish, and commences thus : — '^ The 
natural histoiy of the salmon tribe having of late 
years excited much interest in England, I cannot 
do better than to devote a chapter to some remarks, 
the result of an attentive study of their habits for 
several consecutive years, recorded by my gifted 



162 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

friend and countryman, Mr. Alexander Keiller • ob- 
servations which, I doubt not, will be interesting 
even to the unscientific and general reader.'' The 
observations were made on the river Save, a tribu- 
tary of the Grotha, near Jonserud, where the water 
is invariably clear. They were made from a move- 
able observatory, lantern-shaped, suspended by 
means of ropes and puUies from a pole fixed in the 
bank and inclining over the river. This observatory 
is large enough to hold a man, and a drawing of it 
represents Mr. Keiller seated in it, and observing 
through its bottom the fish that swim or perform 
other operations beneath him. You have seen a 
bale of goods suspended from a crane over the hold 
of a vessel. Imagine the bale a large glazed frame, 
with a bottom strong enough to sustain the weight 
of a man, the hold of the ship the bed of a river, 
and Mr. Keiller sitting within the glazed frame, and 
then you will have a notion of his ingenious obser- 
vatory. 

Let us now see what he saw from his watch-box 
hanging over and a little above the river. '' Sal- 
mon," he says, ^' are pretty abundant in the Save. 
The fishing produced, including grilse, about three 
thousand pounds weight annually. Many fish were 
taken in weirs, others in nets, or by the rod. The 
larger salmon always appear first in the spring ; as 
the summer advances, the fish are much smaller ; 
but in the autumn heavy fish again show them- 
selves. These are not fresh run, however ; at least 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 163 

they are somewhat discolored, from which it is to be 
inferred they have been lying either in brackish 
water or in the deep pools below." In the British 
rivers, generally speaking, the same thing occurs. 
The small summer salmon are with us, for the most 
part, grilse. What will Mr. A. Young, " Salmo," 
Mr. Steddart, my Worcester friends, Messrs. Allies, 
George, and Flinn, and the scientific Gottlieb Boc- 
cius say to the following mode of breeding .? I am 
all agape as I copy it : — '' Salmon commence spawn- 
ing in the Save the first days in November, and con- 
tinue through the month. The female deposits her 
eggs in comparatively still, shoal water, from six to 
eighteen inches in depth, immediately above a rapid. 
She selects such a situation for the following rea- 
sons : Comparatively still water in preference to a 
current, because otherwise the exertion of retaining 
her position, and spawning combined, would be too 
much for her powers ; a shallow, instead of a pool, 
that she may be secure from the sea-trout and other 
fish, which, if in deep water, would congregate about 
her to prey upon her eggs ; and lastly, that her ova, 
in dispersion, may be carried by the gentle stream 
to a secure resting-place amongst the stones below." 
In this country the choice of shallow water, by 
breeding salmon, is attributed to a far different in- 
stinct, viz., that the ova, or rather the water in 
which they are, may be subjected to the influence 
of atmosjDhere and light, and be more oxygenated 
than they would be if deposited in still water. A 



164 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

current is considered absolutely necessary for* their 
development. Now comes a statement totally op- 
posed to our salmon beds — "hills" and "ridds/' as 
we call them : — " It is commonly supposed that, in 
conjunction with the male, the female salmon 
scrapes a hole or furrow in the bed of the river [they 
certainly do so in the rivers of the United King- 
doms, England, Scotland, and Ireland ; I do not 
know how they manage connubial matters in the 
Principality], in which to deposit her eggs, and that 
afterwards, and as a protection from their numerous 
enemies, they cover them over with gravel ; but 
such is not the fact in the Save. The male has 
nothing to do with this part of the work ; and the 
ova, instead of being dropped into a cavity, are de- 
posited on a compuratively smooth surface. Whilst 
in the act of spawning, the female retains her natu- 
ral position. Her belly is near the ground ; at 
times, indeed, probably to rest herself, actually 
touching it. The process of dropping her eggs ap- 
pears to be slow. When a few are collected, she 
turns on her side, waves the flat of her tail gently 
towards the roe, but lifts it up again with great 
force, by which such a vacuum is caused as not only 
to raise the eggs from the ground, and thus to dis- 
tribute them in the stream, but to throw up a mass 
of dirt and stones, the latter not unfrequently of 
very considerable weight. As the mere distribution 
of the ova would require only a slight wave of the 
tail, it appears that the violent lunge is for the ex- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 165 

press purpose of disturbing and muddying the water, 
thereby to conceal the eggs, in a degree at least, from 
their numerous enemies lying in wait below. When 
spaw^ning has once commenced, it seems that the 
male can no longer retain his milt, nor the female 
her roe, the emission continuing under all circum- 
stances. This has often been noticed, even long 
after death. The female salmon leaves the spawn- 
ing-bed many times during the day, and makes little 
excursions about the river, generally into the dead 
water above. At times these trips are somewhat 
extended — say to a distance of some seventy or eighty 
]3aces. " But," said Mr. Keiller, '^ as from my ele- 
vated position I could watch all her movements, I 
feel perfectly confident that, during her absence from 
the spawning-bed, she never in any way comes in 
contact with the male fish. I am at a loss to un- 
derstand the cause of these trips. At times, I have 
thought it is for the purpose of resting herself after 
the fatigue or exhaustion of spawning ; at others, I 
have imagined it to be a special provision of nature ; 
for if her original position were a bad one, and she 
were to remain stationary, all her roe would be des- 
troyed ; whereas, by occasionally moving, as she 
does, about the stream, and dropping her eggs as she 
goes, some of them, at least, are pretty certain to 
find shelter." The specific gravity of the roe is but 
little greater than w^ater ; when once, therefore, in 
motion, unless intercepted, it will float a considerable 
distance down the stream. A large portion of the 



1()6 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

es:^'^ arc of course devoured, Imt the remainder find 
their way into crannies, and under stones inaccessihlo 
to an enemy. From the slow manner in which 
the sahnon spawns, it might be thought on the first 
view of the subject that a large portion of the eggs 
in the body of the fish were in an immahtre 
state ; but such is not the fiict. [It is the fiict in 
this country, and therefore a female salmon of large 
size is obliged to continue the operation of spawning 
for several days. The ova next the throat are imma- 
ture, and cannot be expelled except by violent pres- 
sure. Repeated experiments have proved that they 
will not absorb the milt, and therefore cannot be im- 
pregnated. Mr. Keiller's experiment, proving the 
contrary, is very extraordinary. I am bound to be- 
lieve it, but cannot account for it. Can you, " Sal- 
mo" and " Y ? "] To prove this, Mr. Keillor once 
took the roe in a mass from the belly of a salmon 
recently captured, divided it transversely into three 
equal parts, and applied to each the needful quantity 
of milt. [What, without separating the ova ?] In 
due tinie the several portions produced fry, though 
it is true that the portion taken from the upper part 
of the belly when the eggs were of a somewhat less 
size, was less productive than the other two. [To 
be sure it was, because the unproductive ova w^ere 

immature.] At the tail of a 

spmwning ground the work of a single salmon — or at 
all events never occupied by more than one at a time 
— there is, towards the close of the season, an im- 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 167 

rrense accumulation of gravel, stones, &c. — rjccasion- 
ally, indeed, a good English cartload. [What causes 
the accumulation of these stones ? Surely there 
must have been some digging, or excavating process, 
done by the salmon to form such a cairn.] What 
with ice and floods, however, not only is this heap 
in great part carried away, but the very cavity 
[Who, or what formed the cavity ?] from whence it 
came, often of great extent, is so filled up, that by 
the succeeding summer the bed of the river has as- 
sumed nearly its usual appearance It 

has been shown that, whilst the female is spawning, 
the male is stationed some ten feet in her rear. 
Again, at a respectful distance behind him — say 
tweh^e or fifteen feet, but still in a direct line with 
the female — a lot of trout, sea-trout, and other fish 
are always posted, in readiness to pounce on the eggs, 
when the female starts them adrift with her tail. 
On the appearance of the several clouds of dirt, it is 
amusing to see them all scurrying into the thick of 
it, and following the ova down the stream. It has 
never been observed that the female has a liking for 
one male more than another ; but it has been repeat- 
edly noticed that some one male in particular occu- 
pies the same spot. At some little distance to the 
right and left of this male, two or three other males 
are usually to be seen, and much of his time is occu- 
pied in keeping these interlopers at a distance. His 
charges against them are most vigorous and deter- 
mined, and so frequent that he is seldom stationary 



168 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

for a minute together. This ahiiost incessant iftotion 
of the male seems a special provision of nature ; for, 
were he to remain still, only that portion of the ova 
which passes over him would be impregnated, whereas, 
by moving so much about, his milt becomes distri- 
buted, in a manner, over the whole stream/' 

I must say that, if this is the breeding process 
pursued by Swedish salmon, it is a very improvident 
one. I cannot see how a tithe of the ova can be 
impregnated by it, since so many must escape com- 
ing in contact with the milt, so many must be washed 
uselessly away, and so many eaten by trout and 
other predatory fish. I can vouch for it that our 
Sutherlandshire salmon are much more '^ cannie" in 
their manner of accouchement, &c. An illustration, 
very curious, is given of three pair of salmon in the 
act of spawning. We see one female salmon on her 
belly, about to deposit her ova, a male lower down 
in a line with her, his head turned aside, ''' casting a 
jealous glance at an interloper." JVIr. Lloyd, carry- 
ing on the description of the diagram, says : — " Second 
pair in the centre — female on her side, in the act of 
distributing her ova (when shed, with her tail), the 
male passive, and the fry (predatory trout, &c.) re- 
velling in the passing cloud. Third pair to the right 
— the female passive, the male seizing a poacher on 
his manor, in which interval, it will be observed, an 
intruder takes advantage of the liege lord's absence, 
and is about assuming his place. The zigzag lines 
represent the manner in which the milt of the male 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 169 

salmon, according to his peregrinations, become dis- 
tributed over the whole river." A glance at the il- 
lustration, of which the above is a written descrip- 
tion, will at once show the extraordinary and extra- 
vagant way in which Mr. Keillor's salmon spawn. 
It may be recollected, that in my wTitings I more 
than once stated that I could not account for the car- 
tilaginous, upright excrescence found in the under- 
jaw of the male salmon during the spawning period. 
The following is a singular opinion as to the use made 
of it : — ^' It is the commonly-received notion, that 
the hook on the lower jaw of the male salmon is for 
the purpose of enabling him to assist the female in 
forming a hole in the bed of the river, for the deposit 
of her roe. But such Mr. Keillor convinced himself 
is not the object for which it is designed. In his 
opinion, it is intended to prevent the males, which in 
the spawning season are most pugnacious, from kill- 
ing each other, for when the jaws of even a 25-pound 
fish are distended to the utmost, the hook is so much 
in the way, that the opening in the front of the 
mouth will admit little more than the breadth of a 
finger, and, consequently, he cannot grasp the body 
of an antagonist. Indeed, were he able to do so he 
would soon destroy him." Swedish salmon appear 
to have all the fighting propensities of that most dis- 
interested of royal soldiers, Charles XII. ; eocempli 
gratia — " In the breeding seasons the contests be- 
tween the males are incessant and desperate. Mr. 
Keiller repeatedly noticed an immense salmon charge 



170 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

another with such thorough good will as to throw 
him fairly out of the water. As it is^ their battles 
are bloody enough ; not only are the fish observed to 
be gashed in every direction — probably by their side 
teeth, for those in front, or on the tongue cannot be 
brought pro})erly into play^ owing to the hook — but 
with large pieces of flesh and skin actually hanging 
down their sides. At the close of the season all the 
males are covered with scars. Unless one has seen 
the fish at this time, it is difficult to conceive his 
mutilated condition, and it appears certain that were 
it not for the hook not more than a single male sal- 
mon w^ould leave the spawning ground alive. But it 
is the males alone who, at the termination of the 
spawning season, are thus seamed with scars. Ano- 
ther evidence, were such wanting, that the injuries 
have arisen from combats between themselves, for, 
were the wounds inflicted by otters, as many imagine, 
the females would be equal suffered w^ith the males, 
which is not the case/' All male animals — man 
among the rest — fight and make fools of themselves 
to be the lords and masters of females. The jackass 
is a ferocious ass in this i-espect, and the stag or hart 
will knock to smithereens his antlers, and dash his 
Turkish brains out in a fiery contest for a harem of 
hinds. Yet, according to the bulletin of Mr. Keiller, 
the salmon is the most sanguinary sultan of them 
^11. I have done for the present with quotations 
from Scandinavian Adventures^ the best work by tar 
§yer written on the field sports of Northern Europe. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. l7l 

1 have, in another cohiran, noticed it more promi- 
nently. The habits of the sahnon, as abov^e described, 
are after Mr. Alexander Keiller. Mr. Lloyd does 
not always coincide with the conclusions of liis friend. 
Mr. Keiller is of opinion that salmon fry pass two 
summers in fresh water previously to their first mi- 
gration to the salt-water feeding grounds. 

I shall now carrry out my promise, and notice 
Mr. Stoddart's pamphlet on The Artificial Breeding 
of Salmo7i in its connection ivith the Tay and the 
Tiveed. He does not think artificial breeding neces- 
sary in the Tay, and of the mode in which it is now 
being tried at Stormontfield, on that river, near Perth, 
he has by no means a favorable opinion. He makes 
the following calculations to show that there are 
abundance of spawners in the Tay and its tribu- 
taries, and that the assistance of 400,000 impreg- 
nated ova, placed in the artificial breeding boxes at 
Stormontfield is not wanted, and is paltry in compa- 
rison with the 150,000,000 ova naturally deposited 
annually in the Tay and its tributaries : — 

'' I think I am in no degree overshooting the 
mark, when I set down the annual number of salmon 
and grilse which spawn in the Tay and its tributaries, 
at 30,000. The fact that the average number of sal- 
mon, independent of grilse altogether, which is cap- 
tured annually in Tay, approaches the figure fixed 
upon, is of itself good security for the spawning to 
that extent, in any previous year. In 1846, for in- 
stance, there were taken by the net on Tay and 



172 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

Earn, belov/ the mouth of the Islay, iipwMs of 
34,000 salmon and 30,000 grilses. The 34,000 sal- 
mon, according to certain well-established theories, 
must consequently have spawned in Tay and its tri- 
butaries, some as grilse, some as salmon of inferior 
growth, during the fence season of 1845. A suppo- 
sition, therefore (if it deserves that doubtful name), 
which confines the number of spawning fish on these 
rivers to an average of 30,000, cannot be held as an 
outrage upon truth — nay, is greatly within limits. 
These 80,000 fish, we shall suppose, according to the 
notions set afloat by Mr. Young and others, are 
equally matched in respect to sex ; that is to say, 
that out of the whole number, 15,000 are spawners, 
and the other 15,000, milters or he-fish. To each 
spawner I assign an average weight of 101b. A ten- 
pound breeder, it has been ascertained, yields about 
10,000 ova, certainly not fewer ; consequently the 
number of ova cast, in the sj^awning season, on the 
various breeding grounds referred to, may be com- 
puted at 150,000,000. How much of this large 
amount of spawn are we entitled to suppose is 
brought to life, becomes distributed over the rearino- 
grounds, attains the smolt size, and, assuming its 
plumage, eventually finds its way into the sea or 
firth ? " 

Mr. Stoddart computes the result of the above 
number of ova at 20,000,000 smolts, having allowed 
for every sort of destructive casualty. He calculates 
that the 400,000 ova deposited in the breeding boxes 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 173 

will produce 300,000 fry — a very high calculation 
indeed — and he then says : 

" The artificial nurseries or rearing grounds in 
process of construction are, I fear, much too limited 
in size to afford accommodation to the number of 
fry anticipated from the boxes. I shall assume that 
they occupy an area of five acres, although I have 
reason for believing that not one fourth of that ex- 
tent of surfiice is intended to be put into requisition. 
Five acres of ground converted into ponds or reser- 
voQ's for the reception of 300,000 fry ! Five acres, 
in a state of artificiality, subjected, possibly enough, 
to the influence of a stream or diversion of water 
passing through their several divisions, and so pre- 
venting them from becoming stagnant, but totally 
devoid of the advantages possessed by the natural 
rearing grounds of Tay, in the shape of shelter and 
sustenance ! Are we justified in taking it for granted 
that so limited an extent of nursery will suffice for 
the wants, assist the growth, and do justice to the 
condition of 300,000 young salmon, during the space 
of an entire twelvemonth .? — in other words, that a 
single square yard of artificial rearing ground, be the 
depth of water what it may, aftbrds ample enough 
accommodation for twelve smolts and the fractional 
part of a thirteenth, throughout the whole period ? 
I certainly think not.^' 

It seems that the fry artificially produced near 
Perth are to be artificially fed for one whole year. 



174 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

Upon this senseless ]3roject Mr. Stoddart Sensibly 
remarks : — 

" As to the hand-feeding proposed, it may be all 
very well to apply it to the bringing up of such fish 
as carp and tench, but to carry it into successful 
operation with young salmon, will, I fear, turn out a 
work of impracticability. An expensive one, at any 
rate, it is acknowledged to be — the most costly item 
in the whole series of experiments. Why, therefore, 
pursue it at all ? Why not rest content with the 
hatching process, and allow the infant fry, after its 
full development, convenient access to the river ? 
A sluice or run in communication with the boxes to- 
wards the Tay will effect this object. In that case 
— were the experiment allowed to rest at this junc- 
ture, the object of it may possibly to some extent 
become attained. It never can, by prosecuting it 
farther in the way proposed — that is by cooping up 
the fry in mere tanks or ponds of very limited di- 
mensions, and by hand-feeding them with such un- 
natural aliment as chopped liver." 

If the fry hatched at Stormontfield are confined 
in nurseries for a year, or until the migratory period, 
the experiment will be a failure. When a month 
old they should be turned into the river, and they 
will take care of themselves, migrate naturally, and 
all that escape destruction return as grilse. I am 
of opinion that confined and hand-fed fry, if confined 
and fed for the space of a year, will not return, if 
they do migrate to sea, from it. 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 175 

Mr. Stoddart finds the stock of fry very scanty 
in his own river, the Tweed, and he proposes some- 
thing hke artificial breeding in it to increase the 
stock, which appears as necessary to be done in the 
border rivers as it is unnecessary in the abundantly 
stocked Tay, He writes : — 

^^ The opening of Tweed on the 15th of Feb- 
ruary, as is well known, has of late years been sig- 
nalized or rather rendered notorious, by an immense 
slaughter at many of the netting stations not only 
of kelts, but of baggits and kippers to boot. Last 
year, as I have been given to understand, scores of 
ripe spawners were captured during the opening week 
below Tweedmill and in the vicinity of Twizel. I 
have known to the amount of 80 she-fish, all large 
and primed with ova, having been taken in a single 
day, from the Tweed, on a similar occasion, and there 
is every reason to believe that the termination of the 
present fence time will be followed up, as usual, by 
extensive massacres of unspawned salmon and grilses. 
Now, what I propose is this, that the proprietors or 
parties holding salmon fishings on Tweed should in- 
struct competent persons to attend the various net- 
ting stations at the opening of the season, for the 
purpose of expressing, collecting, and inoculating, 
when opportunity offers, this great annual wastage of 
spawn — for the purpose also (not of stowing it away 
in wooden boxes, over which an artificial run of water 
shall be directed), but of committing it to ^ ridds' 
formed with the shovel, hoe, or plough in the bed of 



176 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

the river itself, there to await, as a matter o^ com- 
mon certainty, its being brought to hfe 

Immediately on the expiry of close-time, the nets 
and cobles are set in motion. A few shots determine, 
in most cases, the contents of the river, near the sta- 
tion where these are made. For every clean salmon 
taken during the first fortnight, in Tweed, there are 
at least a dozen kelts and four or five unspawned fish 
generally in a very forward or mature state. These 
are secured, as a matter of course, during the ordi- 
nary endeavors made by the fishermen to bring the 
net into contact with something better. There is no 
cost or extra labor therefore required^ in order to ob- 
tain the spawn. The attendance of one or two of 
the ordinary river police at each likely station, during 
the first three weeks of the season, is all that is 
needed in order to collect the ova and conduct the 
inoculating process. This, under the instructione of 
Mr. Mitchell, the active superintendent of that body, 
any one accustomed to the handling of salmon can 
accomplish. Say the ridds, by permission, are formed 
with shovel or plough at the Monk's Ford, betwixt 
Old Melrose and Dryburgh — nothing more is neces- 
sary than to forward the spawn to the Newtown sta- 
tion, and thence conveying it to the ford in question, 
mix it up with gravel or river sand, and commit it 
to the ridd ; all which may be done within two or 
three hours of its being taken from the fish. Can 
any thing be simpler or less expensive ? Well, mark 
the results. Here is a quantity of ova which never 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 177 

would have a chance of being brought to life (for 
even suj)posing the baggits themselve are returned 
alive to the river, the disturbance occasioned by the 
constant plying of the nets on or near the spawning 
grounds, and the liability such fish incur of being 
retaken, over and over again, make miscarriage al- 
most inevitable) — these ova, down to a single pellet, 
are rescued from certain destruction and buried with 
extreme care in a choice portion of the river, where 
no ordinary calamity can possibly overtake them. 
The result will be, that almost all the ova so inhumed 
will come to life ; and say that they form the supply 
from only two hundred baggits, each baggit yielding 
a trifle beyond 10,000, we have at once, added to 
the natural resources of the Tweed, a hatch or brood 
consisting of 2,000,000 of fry, all vitalized at the 
expense of a few pounds sterling. Of these fry, 
nearly one-half, without any additional cost whatso- 
ever, is likely to attain the smolt stage, and allowing 
that only a single individual out of two hundred find 
its way back to Tweed, in the shape of a grilse, the 
annual produce of the river undergoes an increase of 
nearly 5,000 available fish. Let Mr. Ramsbottom's 
system of breeding and rearing, at one farthing per 
smolt, match this if it can." 

I am strongly of opinion that the Tweed Com- 
missioners would act wisely by paying prompt, sub- 
stantial attention to the feasible suggestions of Mr. 
Stoddart. It is a great pity to allow poor old Tweed 
to go to rack and ruin. We London salmon anglers 



178 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

shall lament over her irremediable decay, fcfr, apart 
the beauty of her scenery, she may, if Mr. Stoddart 
be listened to, be rendered the best nearest salmon 
river to the English and Scottish capitals. 

For this year, at least, I have done with the na- 
tural history of salmon. Let not my drying my pen 
on the subject prevent '' Salmo," " Y.," and others 
from keeping theirs in working trim. For March 
19th I shall write, with this motto from the Captives 
of Plautus, 

"Nunc hoc animura advortlto, ut ea quae, sentio pariter scias," 

my first angling lesson for the season. 

Ephemera. 
Feb. 24. 



ON THE BREEDING AND PRESERVATION OF SAL- 
MON. 

[The following article on the Breeding and Preservation of 
Salmon, is the comniunication signed Salmo, published in BelFs 
Weekly Messetiger of March 5, 1854, and referred to in the Fifth 
Lesson of Ephemera, on Salmon Bi-eediug, published in the same 
number of that journal.] 

Mr. Editor : We all remember the sensation pro- 
duced by a late and now lamented secretary for Ire- 
land, when, remonstrating with the landowners of 
that suffering country, he reminded them that '^ Pi^o- 
perty has its duties as loell us its rights.'' Every 
man is conscious of the truth of this remark, which 
has now passed into a proverb, but few men could 
have said it so pithily and so well. I intend to bor- 
row this maxim as the basis of the suggestions I have 
to offer as to the best means of preserving and in- 
creasing the breed of salmon, of which it is impossi- 
ble to magnify the importance. As an article of 
food, it is beyond comparison the most valuable of 
fresh-water hsh, both on account of the delicacy of 
its flavor, and the numbers in which it can be sup- 



180 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

plied. By wise and j^rudent legislation it muf also 
be rendered cheap, and accessible to the family of an 
ordinary artisan. 

The salmon requires only two conditions to enable 
her to mutiply and increase indefinitely, viz., an un- 
distm'bed breediii2f-2:round in fresh water, and an 
uninterrupted feeding-ground in the sea. How hap- 
pens it, then, that these two simple wants cannot be 
conceded ? I w^ill tell you in a few words. The 
salmon, being a migratory fish, is continually chang- 
ing its habitation. To-day it may be in the sea — 
to-morrow in the river — and in a few days afterwards 
at the top of some remote mountain stream. John 
Graball, who owns the lower part of the river, rea- 
sons thus with himself : — " All the salmon which 
comes into the river, must pass through my liberties 
before they can be taken by any one else, and as sal- 
mon is now selling at 3s. a pound, I will let none of 
them escape if I can prevent it. Now's my time to 
reap the harvest ; what I leave, any one else may 
catch if he can." The same motives and the same 
feelings actuate John's neighbors higher up the 
stream, until you reach a point at which the fish ar- 
rive so late in the season, or in such small numbers as 
not to be worth the expense of men and nets. The 
proprietors of the upper rivers then, with the excep- 
tion of a few occasional fish taken by the rod, derive 
no benefit from the salmon. They have the pleasure 
of preserving them, finding them breeding ground, 
watching over them during the most critical parts of 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 181 

the year, and, when these duties have been fully and 
conscientiously discharged, they have no other reward 
than the satisfaction that they have acted as good 
citizens, and have merited the approbation of the 
public. However, it sometimes happens that one of 
these proprietors is not over scrupulous. He will 
take fish out of season, either with rod or net. He 
will spear the spawning salmon for the sake of the 
roe, and make a profit by selling it to the retailers 
of fishing tackle, who dispose of this tempting lure 
in large quantities to ambitious anglers. Perhaps 
John Graball gets to hear of this illicit traffic, and 
pays a visit to the unlicensed poacher, and threatens 
with information and fine, or possibly with imprison- 
ment, if the money be not forthcoming. Our friend, 
however, does not let Mr. Graball have all the talk 
to himself. We may suppose him making some such 
answer as this : — '' I'll tell you what, Mr. Graball, 
if we come to balance accounts fairly between you 
and me in the matter of these fish, you have the 
best of the bargain by long odds. You only own 
about half a mile of the river, and yet you contrive 
to get a profit of £500 or £1,000 a year out of it. 
You never breed a fish. All yours is deep water, 
without a yard of breeding ground in it. You never 
feed a fish, for they all come out of the sea ready 
fed, and ready fattened to your hand. Now, look at 
me. I have five miles of water running through my 
estate, and brooks and rivulets without number. 
From November to January my waters are crowded 



182 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

with fish, salmon, and grilse, and sea trouts ; 4)ut 
they are worth nothing to me. They come here to 
breed, and I never see a fish fit for the table. See 
the thousands, aye, millions of young fiy that leave 
my waters for the sea every year, and yet I have no 
benefit from them. You catch them all at the 
mouth of the river, and make a fortune by them, 
whilst they do not return me the value of a shilling. 
I breed them ; her Majesty, as Queen of the Ocean, 
feeds them, and you catch and sell them, and yet 
you grudge me a trifle of salmon roe, which I take 
more for the name of the thing than for any great 
profit to be made by it. But I tell you what, John 
Graball, now that you have broached the subject, I 
intend to be plain with you, I will not consent any 
longer to breed salmon for you, unless I am to have 
a share of the profits. I will throw the river open 
to everybody who chooses to come, either with rods 
or nets. I will watch the fords at night, and I will 
spear every salmon I can find. I will do at the up- 
per part of the river what you do at the lower part. 
I will take every fish I can lay my hands on, and 
make all the profit I can by it. Yet I am not an 
unreasonable man, John ; I admit that property has 
its duties, and it is my duty to preserve the salmon 
for the public good. But there is another side of 
that question, and property has its rights as well as 
duties ; and if I do my duty by preserving the sal- 
mon, I claim an interest in the salmon as my right. 
It is of no use to tell me that the law will prevent 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 183 

or punish me for taking- foul fish, or destroying spawn. 
When the law is palpably unjust and one-sided no- 
body cares for it, nobody respects it. The law, to be 
respected and cared for, should deal equally with the 
rights of property, and the duties of property ; and 
if it enforce the one and neglect the other, it will 
only generate contempt and apathy. Now 111 tell 
you what Til do, John ; III join with you in calling 
a meeting of proprietors from the top of the river to 
the bottom, and we will try to make a bargain that 
shall be for the benefit of all. Let us form ourselves 
into a company, and preserve the waters carefully at 
our joint expense, and if there be any profit in the 
fisheries, let us join in the profit. You cannot have 
the salmon if I refuse to breed them, and I do posi- 
tively refuse any longer to keep a brood farm, and 
let you have all the young stock. If you agree to 
this offer, we can breed ten times as many fish as we 
do at present, and we shall all do our best to preserve 
them. As matters now stand, I care nothing about 
them ; I have no interest in them beyond the pride 
of having salmon in my waters ; but you know, John, 
that pride will not pay rates and taxes. Well ! is 
it a bargain ? Are we to be partners or antagonists ? 
choose for yourself." 

You have here, Mr. Editor, if not the words, at 
any rate the sentiments, of all those river proprietors 
who are debarred, by their distance from the sea, from 
ever taking a salmon in a seasonable condition. 
There are many of them who incur considerable ex- 



184 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

peiise in watching and preserving their waters, ami 
yet derive no pecuniary advantage from their care 
and expenditure. This is manifestly unjust, and this 
injustice is the main cause of the diminution in the 
numbers of salmon. Unless the breedino:-o:rounds 
are superintended with great care and Adgilance, the 
only source of supply is cut off. As the salmon di- 
minishes in numbers, the owners and lessees of fish- 
eries are compelled to use greater diligence to capture 
the few that present themselves, and these two causes 
continue to operate in a gradually increasing ratio, 
until the breed must and will become extinct, unless 
some prompt and efficient remedy be adopted. 

What, then, is the remedy ? Simply this : give 
every proprietor of land on the banks of a salmon 
river, a legal right to a participation in the profits 
of the fisheries. Offer him every inducement, by that 
most influential and seductive of all motives, self- 
interest, to become a breeder and ]Dreserver of sal- 
mon. By the same agency, you deprive him of every 
motive to kill unseasonable fish, or destroy their ova. 
He has a claim to this participation by natural and 
undoubted right, and, until this concession is made 
to him, all other projects must and will fail. Fro- 
perty has its rights as luell as its duties, and it is one 
of the rights of property, that he who breeds the fish, 
and feeds the young, until they are strong enough to 
migrate to the ocean, ought to share in any profit to 
be derived from the capture of these fish, on their 
return to the river. To deny this proposition, would 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 185 

be a libel upon the common sense and the primitive 
instincts of man, which never fail to appreciate, 
though they often fail to analyze, a glaring and pal- 
pable injustice. 

You may ask me how I propose to accomi)lish 
this object. In the first place, I would put an end 
to all conflicting rights on a salmon river by making 
the proprietors a corporate body, and placing the 
whole under one management. Take, as an exam- 
ple, the river Kibble. I would constitute the pro- 
prietors a company, under the name of " The Kibble 
Fisheries Company." Every proprietor should be a 
member of this body, and entitled to a voice in its 
management, as in a railway or other company con- 
stituted by an act of Parliament. By this means 
we should get rid of many jealousies, where there 
are conflicting rights, and we should have salmon 
at the lowest cost, because there would only be 
one set of nets, one set of men, and one board of 
management. I would prohibit, under heavy penalties, 
the use of a net in any part of the river, by any but 
the constituted authorities, unless on a written appli- 
cation for some experimental purpose, to be submitted 
to the board, and conducted under the superintend- 
ence of a conservator of the river. By this plan 
every landowner on the banks of the river, or of any 
tributary stream to which salmon resort for breeding, 
would become a shareholder in the company, and en- 
titled to participate in the profits. The only practi- 
cal diflicalty would be to determine the proportions in 



186 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

which the profits should be divided between the^pro- 
prietors of the upper and lower parts of the river. 
This is a matter of detail which might easily be ar- 
ranged, as questions of tenfold more difficulty occur 
every year in the conduct of ordinary corporations. 
It may be asked, would I make the adoption of this 
scheme compulsory on every salmon river. Certainly 
not. I would first pass a general act of Parliament 
prohibiting the use of stake nets or any other engine 
or device of any description whatsoever that was fixed 
and self-acting in any river, or estuary of a river, 
frequented by salmon. The close days might be left 
to the discretion of the magistrates assembled in 
quarter sessions, as provided by statute now in force. 
It would then be necessary to prohibit the use of any 
net in a salmon river under a certain sized mesh, so 
as to prevent the taking of all young fry, or fish, un- 
der a given weight. I think these provisions impe- 
ratively necessary in any public act. It is impossible 
to say how many thousands and millions of young 
salmon are destroyed by these pestilent inventions. 
Take as many as you can with the rod, but let no 
man, under a penalty, take with a net, in a salmon 
river, any fish less than five pounds weight. This 
would simplify the matter very much, and would in- 
jure no one, as the real mercantile value of a fishery 
is determined almost altogether, by the weight and 
number of the salmon taken. Let any man con- 
sider for himself the amount of mischief done by 
taking so many thousands of salmon in their first 



THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 187 

year of immigration, averaging from lib to 51b, in- 
stead of criving them another season's grace, to return 
valuable Vi^es of 71b to 141b each. I speak within 
compass when I say that this single regulation would 
quadruple the number of salmon in the second year 
of its trial. After making these provisions I would 
pive power to a certain number of the proprietors, by 
mere petition to the House of Commons, to incorpo- 
rate the fishery, and erect themselves into a company, 
with power to levy rates, to appoint directors and 
other officers, in the same manner as any other pub- 
lic body which derives authority from an act of Par- 
liament, the powers and functions of this body and 
its officers to be defined by the public act. I have 
here given an outline of a scheme which, I feel satis- 
fied would meet the urgent and immediate wants 
of the salmon-loving public. The general good 
would be consulted by strict enactments against the 
present vile and destructive practices. Private in- 
terests would be respected by recognising a property 
which at present is ignored by the law, although it 
is recognized by conscience and common sense ; con- 
flicting claims and mutual jealousies would subside 
under'^the influence of a joint and common interest ; 
poaching and unseasonable fishing would rapidly 
abate, if not disappear altogether, by uniting in the 
closest of ties all persons interested in the protection 
of the fish ; and the salmon would enjoy, for the first 
time in the memory of man, the full opportunity of 
developing all her resources, and of proving how 



188 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 

much she has been libelled by those feeble clrivelters, 
who have voted her incompetent to discharge the 
functions which constitute the chief end and object 
of her existence. Give us these provisions, ye men 
of tanks and incubators ! ye philosophers of conjec- 
ture and romance ! ye novelists and theorizers ! Grant 
to the sabnon one-half the chance you give to your 
pigs, your cattle, your poultry, or your game, and 
let us see whether she forms the only exception to 
that noble and beneficent ordination of Providence 
which has formed every animal perfect in its kind, 
and has given it the instincts and the capacity to 
accomplish worthily and effectively the purposes for 
which it was created. 

Feb. 18th, 1854. Salmo. 



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